Satsuma Cake
What to do with a bag of satsumas that have been hanging round my fridge for a few months? And haven’t gone off thanks to Lakeland Limited’s amazing green Stayfresh Longer bags. If you haven’t got these, I can’t recommend them highly enough. Fruit and veg lasts months if you pop them in one of these bags and seal it with a clip. I think I’ve probably has these satsumas since February and they’re still absolutely fine. But we’d been invited for a socially distant garden socialise with some friends, and I needed to take a cake. I fancied doing something a bit different, And these looked just perfect for the job.
Thanks to lockdown, after only about 20 years of having an utterly muddled folder of recipes torn out from magazines, and handwritten recipes given to me by friends and relatives, with dinners and cakes and soups all mixed up together, I’ve finally got round to organising it! And it’s so much easier to find recipes!
When wondering what to do with my satsumas, I suddenly remembered a recipe I’d kept because it sounded yummy, but never baked before, made with mandarins. The tatty bit of paper looked as if it’d been torn from a Times magazine, so I was guessing it’s a Donna Hay recipe from The Times Magazine, given to me by my late mother-in-law.
One Google later, and here is the original Donna Hay recipe … but my version has been more than somewhat adapted. Firstly to be gluten and dairy free. And then, I didn’t have mandarins, just satsumas. And I tend to use Stork (or equivalent) rather than butter in a cake recipe because Mary Berry says you often get a better rise on a cake when Stork is used, And Paul Hollywood agrees with her.
Satsuma Cake
Ingredients
- 360-390 g Satsumas or other small oranges Approx this weight. Don't fuss too much over it.
- 175 g Stork or other baking spread (I use dairy free)
- 330 g Caster Sugar
- 3 Eggs
- 2 tsp Vanilla Extract
- 1 tsp Orange Extract
- 90 g Ground Almonds
- 225 g Plain Flour (I use Doves Gluten Freee)
- 1/4 tsp Xantham Gum (if using plain GF flour)
- 2 tsp Baking Powder
Icing
- 60 g Oatly Creme Fraiche or normal Creme Fraiche
- 200 g Icing Sugar
- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
Instructions
For the cake
- Preheat the oven to 160°C (on my fan oven,the dial needs to be around 145° to get an oven temperature of 160° C) / Gas Mark 3.
- Grease and line a 9" (23cm) loose-bottomed tin with greaseproof paper.
- On a piece of baking parchment / greaseproof paper, draw round a small saucepan lid and cut out this circle.
- Place the unpeeled satsumas in a small saucepan and cover with hot water. Bring to the boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover with the circle of baking parchment, and weigh down with a small saucer so the satsumas are submerged. Cook for 20 minutes.
- Drain the water out and leave the satsumas to cool for 10 minutes or so.
- Put the satsumas in a food processor or blender, and process or blend until you get a purée. Yep, skin and everything.
- Put the Stork and caster sugar in a mixing bowl and beat with an electric mixer for approx 8 minutes until you get a pale and fluffy, quite volumous mixture. You'll probably need to scrape the sides of the bowl down a few times to make sure you incorporate all the caster sugar with the Stork and get it a lovely, pale consistency.
- Beat the eggs together in a mixing jug with a fork. Add the vanilla extract and the orange extract. Mix again.
- Measure out the flour, Xantham gum (if using), Baking Powder and Ground Almonds.
- Add the flour mixture, the egg mixture and the puréed satsumas to the mixing bowl.
- Mix until just combined with the electric mixer.
- Pour into the lined baking tin and smooth the mixture down with a spatula.
- Bake for approx 50 minutes until a cocktail stick comes out clean. My oven doesn't bake that evenly, so you may want to check about 2 or 3 mniutes before the end of cooking time, and turn the tin round inthe oven so you get an even colour.
- Leave the cake in the tin for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a cooling rack.
For the icing
- Beat the Creme Fraiche a little. Add the icing sugar bit by bit and beat well. Add the vanilla extract after you've added about half of the icing sugar. Ice your cake!
Notes
If you're in the USA, you'll be able to find gluten free Oatly products. But if you're in the UK or Europe, sadly not yet. If you can tolerate dairy, simply use normal Creme Fraîche for the same result.
