How to Bake an Orange Cake

Ingredients

125g Butter
1/4 cup Milk
1/4 cup Orange Juice
2 eggs
3/4 cup Caster Sugar
1.5 cups Self Raising Flour
1+ Tablespoon Orange Rind
Pinch of Salt
Droplet of Vanilla Essence

Preliminary
Put the Waxing/Baking Paper into the tin. Lightly butter the insides of paper/tin by using the wrapping paper of the butter.

Make sure the ingredients are at room temperature - otherwise they don't gel so well. This applies esp to the butter. If the butter is stone cold - it will take forever for it to be mixed in with sugar.

Step 1.
Make sure Butter is at room temp - soft to the touch; if not microwave it for 5 seconds or something. Cream the Butter and the Sugar ONLY. Stir them around til the Sugar is fully mixed in with the butter and you get that lovely yellow texture look. Don't stir for too long (like 30 minutes) to avoid the butter changing back to oil. Throw in a pinch of salt too.

Step 2.
Add Eggs and Stir that in well. Turn on and Preheat the Oven to 180C.

Step 3.
Add the Milk now. Stir well. You can also add in a small teardrop of vanilla essence. Or if you want you can do this when you pour the flour in.

Step 4
Sift the SR Flour and add it in. Once you have added the flour don't stir it around too much. I recommend you do this manually by hand not by machine. As you stir it - add in the *half cup of orange juice (OJ)* and the *orange rind* - you can add in 1 tablespoon or 2. I like to add in a sliced mandarin skin on top of that.

Try and not mix the milk and the orange juice together because the OJ makes the milk curdle.

Note on Orange Rind - do yourself a favor and get a nice hand held Orange Zester that can really scrub away at the orange skin. I bought mine from Kmart - a Swiss made one that cost $10. Fantastic! I'll write the name of it down later. The trick is to remove the orange part of the skin without taking too much of the white stuff which like the seed makes it bitter.

I also like to throw in one Mandarin skin as well but I make sure I remove as much of the white part of the skin as possible. Remove all seeds - they make it bitter.)

(Note on OJ - I don't like adding the milk together with the OJ on account of the juice causing the milk to curdle. So I like to add the OJ and rind last as I'm stiring the flour in.

If you don't have Orange Juice or Rind - I guess you can use Orange Marmalade - the type that has bits of peel inside. About 4??? tablespoons of OM should be ok (I'm really not sure). You should need to be careful adding that sort of stuff as the more liquid/sugar you put inside - the wetter the cake will be etc..)

Pour the mix into the tin lined with paper. Make sure its flattens out a bit by jiggling it. And put it into the centre of the oven - if most of the heat is coming from the bottom - you can put the cake at a higher spot to avoid the bottom getting burnt.

(I clean and wipe up now. Don't leave the flour sieve sitting in the kitchen sink)

Take the cake out when ready - this is about 30 - 40 minutes depending on your oven.

You can tell it is ready by poking a skewer into the cake and seeing if any of the mix sticks onto the stick. But do this only at the 30 minute mark. If it does stick like small chunks of uncooked mix, leave it in for another 5 minutes.

Take it out of the tin now. Carefully. But only after you are really sure the thing is cooked inside - otherwise it will break apart.

Usually I sandwich the tin with two plates and flip it over. Carefully. The tin is pretty hot so I wear gloves.

Let it sit for about 5 minutes and serve with Hot Earl Grey Tea and decorate it with fresh lavender! I love using my vintage Noritake Arlene set for this sort of occasion.

PS. I find it easier to double the amounts and bake two cakes because in my supermarket, the butter is sold in 250g blocks.