Whole Orange Cake

This delightful whole orange cake was made, entirely from scratch and all by himself, by my eldest son (aged 12 & 3/4) for his dessert course for our family Come Dine with Me competition. We each take turns coming up with and cooking a three course meal for the rest of the family and then we're rated out of 10, by each of us, on flavour, presentation and overall appeal (points are awarded if the youngest two children eat the course at all!). The winner walks away with the coveted Golden Spaghetti & Meatballs Award (and I get two evenings a month off from cooking dinner!).

This cake recipe, from the BBC Good Food Cakes & Bakes recipe book (a birthday gift for me from the eldest) went down quite well, especially with the younger children. This moist cake has a strong, pleasant orange flavour, due to the inclusion of a whole orange which had been simmered in water for an hour, cooled and then pureed. It's quite similar to this orange and almond cake recipe, but halving the quantities and using self-raising flour. The original recipe called for an icing drizzle using powdered sugar mixed with orange juice, but we had some natural orange icing sugar given to us by Sugar and Crumbs which we tried and it was quite lovely - very orangey and pleasant indeed.

I do believe he was rated quite highly by everyone for this cake - the results will be out at the end of the month once the final contestant (the OH) had cooked his meal.

I am including this recipe (much to my son's delight) in How to Cook Good Food's One Ingredient food blogging challenge. This month we're challenged to cook with oranges.