Recipe: Orange Kiss-me Cake

The alternative to boring coffee cake, with vitamin C to boot!

I got this recipe from Cook's Country Magazine. Initially what attracted me to it was the fact that you use in an entire Orange in the cake. I just had to try it!

Here's what you'll need to make it:

• 2 Oranges
• 2 cups (10 ounces) all-purpose flour (I only had cake flour but it worked out fine)
• 1 1/4 ts salt
• 1 ts baking soda
• 1 cup (7 ounces) & 2 Tbs salt
• 3/4 cup walnuts, toasted
• 1/4 ts ground cinnamon
• 1 cup golden raisins (I used regular raisins because that's what I had on hand)
• 8 Tbs unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup milk
• 2 large eggs

1. The first thing I did was toasted my walnuts earlier that day. Which made the house smell awesome. I set the oven to 350° and let them toast for about 10 minutes until they started turning brown. Then I let those cool as I did other things around the house.

2. When I was ready to start on my cake I preheated my oven to 350° and buttered my dish so my cake wouldn't stick. I used a 13x9-inch glass baking dish.

3.I grated approximately 1/2 ts of Orange zest with a microplane. Then peeled off 2 2-inch strips from the same Orange. We're going to set both the zest and the peels off to the side for a bit.

4. Using that zested orange,  I halved and squeezed the juice into a liquid measuring cup.  Then discarded the used halves from that. Then  I did the same to the unzested orange but made sure to set aside both halves for the batter (because we fancy). The recipe called for 2/3 cup of juice but I got about 1 Cup out of mine, which made it extra moist. Make sure to remove the seeds from juice!

5. I very lazily whisked together my flour, salt and baking soda in bowl and set that aside.

6. Here's the fun part. Using a large, I repeat, LARGE food processor, I combined 1 cup of sugar and my toasted Walnuts and pulsed them together until they became like the texture of sand. This by itself smells amazing and I want to make a crust out of this. 

7. Then I added 1/3 cup of the sugar walnut mixture to my zest and gave it a little mix with a fork. Then set aside again!

Walnut Sugar Zest combo

8. Going back to the leftover walnut sugar mixture, I added in my raisins (I used the regular kind), and those juiced Orange halves we set aside, and just let that food processor go until I got a paste like consistency. Then I added in my Butter, and let that mix before adding in my Milk and Eggs. I made sure to scrape the bowl as I went along.

9. When my paste was completed I slowly pulsed in my flour combination in small amounts at a time until everything was combined. 

10. Then I poured everything into a my already greased dish and set in the oven. The recipe said 30-35 minutes, but it was more like 40 because mine had the excess juice.

11. While that baked off, I took those orange peel strips and 2 Tbs of Sugar put them in a small sauce pan and let that simmer until my mixture became syrupy, which took about 10 minutes over medium heat. Then I removed the Orange Peels and let it cool.

What your Orange Syrup should look like.

12. As soon as the cake came out. I drizzle that orange syrup onto the cake as evenly as I could and let it sit so the cake would absorb the liquid, this should take about 5 minutes. After that I sprinkled the remaining Walnut Sugar Zest combo on top of the cake to give it that awesome crumble finish. It's meant to sit and cool for 2 hours. But I dug right in, and it was worth it.

Our final product in all it's glory!

Unlike regular coffee cake this isn't overly sweet and the Orange flavor really makes this something special. I can see this paring well with a cup of my favorite (and unfortunately seasonal) Kati Kati Blend Coffee from Sbux.