There is a 6-year-old in my world who, when presented with this cake and the knowledge that an entire orange had been sacrificed for its betterment, screwed up her face in genuine disgust. Her 9-year-old brother was more forgiving, and even curious at the idea that you could boil and mince a whole orange, skin and all, and add this to a cake mixture. My 7-year-old, Giulio, defended the boiled orange thing and told the 6-year-old she was crazy not to eat it. But she didn’t budge, defiant being that she is.
That morning Giulio had played his last soccer game for the season, and I was on orange duty. In a panic, I had bought at the local, overpriced supermarket a few too many oranges just before the game. Much to his embarrassment, I parked near the pitch and sat in our car with my little chopping board and knife, cutting up orange segments, bits of ripe orange flying onto to my woolly jumper and the excess juice running off the sides of the board and onto my jeans. I also didn’t have the right container, I was told. Quelle horreur. I was meant to have one with a lid like Fin’s dad, and instead I had a fancy bowl with a kitchen towel over the top. The shame!
It was a great soccer game. My dad came along to watch and Giulio scored a goal, much to our delight. Soccer games, I’ve concluded, are about the only place I feel I can be a decent kind of extra-curricular mum. I am otherwise rather rubbish in this department, preferring to lurk in the background at a school assembly, avoiding the kinds of conversation that do not come easily for me. This is strange, given I am somewhat of a glorified ego fluffer in aspects of my work.
To my defence, there is an awful lot of talk about drinking, as well as the minutia of buying, selling or renovating houses. All relevant topics for our age and stage of life, I guess, but the kind of conversation that as a teenager I feared I would be having as an adult and swore I would do my best to avoid. Yet here I am, all soccer oranges and stained clothes, at the dawn of middle age and a firm member of the daily commuting society, that of the vacant stares of the tired – a society to which I had also pledged as an observant youngster on the train to school that I would never belong.
Some of the lingering yearnings and tastes of my younger self persist, quietly, but occasionally with the not-so-quiet defiance of that 6-year-old in my life. One of the reasons I love her so. I play my electronic music loudly while I move plants around the ladypad and collate receipts for tax time. My ‘memory box’ full of scribblings and keepsakes and plans urges me in the direction of my dreams, while I negotiate schedules and logistics and birthday parties, finding tiny moments to honour dreams that I refuse to give up. I awake early most mornings to sway and shake to tribal tunes and invoke Saraswati, knowing I have precisely 10 minutes of yogi time before I must prepare ‘mini breakfast’ for the little lord and switch to drill sergeant mode, leading the mission of getting us out of the house and on with our days.
And all of this to say, that here is a soccer mum orange cake, sensible and rather grown-up. Low sugar and gluten-free, with flecks of delicious and absolutely necessary rebellion.
INGREDIENTS
1 orange
1 ½ cups almond meal
½ cup caster sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extra
100 g dark chocolate
METHOD
Preheat your oven to 180°C (350°F). Grease and line a 20 cm (8 inch) round cake pan.
Boil the orange in a large saucepan of water, turning regularly to ensure it cooks through evenly and topping up the water as needed. Cook until the orange is soft all the way through, checking with a skewer. This will take about 45 minutes or so. Remove the orange when ready and drain it well, then cool and puree in a food processor.
In a separate bowl, whisk the almond meal, sugar and baking powder, until combined.
Whisk or beat the eggs separately for a good 4–5 minutes, until they are bubbly and light. Add the orange puree and almond meal mixtures to the eggs, as well as the vanilla, using a spatula to fold these through carefully.
Break up the chocolate and chop into smaller pieces (or use chocolate bits from the supermarket, but I prefer dark chocolate tendrils or shavings direct from a block for this cake). Add the chocolate to the batter and fold through with the spatula, ensuring the chocolate is evenly distributed.
Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan and bake for about 45 minutes to 1 hour, depending on your oven, or until the top is golden and a skewer comes out clean.
Allow the cake to cool before transferring it to a wire rack to cool fully. Dust with icing sugar and add a few extra tendrils of chocolate, if you wish.
Serves 8–10 (you can also double the quantity for a larger cake in a 23 cm / 9 inch pan)
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