The Bells of St Clements

Orange Cake with Lemon-lime Icing

Moving to a new country brings with it a whole raft of issues to contend with. For me, moving to the USA from Australia has meant learning a whole new language for food. I spend extraordinary amounts of time standing in grocery stores reading. No, not reading books. Reading labels. Trying to figure out what the composition of different items are, trying to figure out what's similar to the ingredients I'm used to working with. These aren't automatically the things you think of as troublesome or issues to overcome when you move from one first-world, English-speaking country to another. Especially when those countries are so culturally similar; at least at first glance.

But here I am. Living in Texas. Standing in supermarkets, grocery stores, specialty stores and fresh markets, and reading. I go in with enthusiasm. Determined to find ingredients and overcome the differences. I usually leave exhausted and often defeated by the variety. Each time, I stand in front of an array of flours and baking sodas and remember Barry Schwartz's TED Talk on The Paradox of Choice.

Today was my first foray into cake baking since we arrived and thankfully, it worked. I have no electric mixer (hand-held or stand), no food processor and no baking pans apart from a roasting pan that came with the apartment we're staying in, and I'm working with an oven (and temperatures measured in Fahrenheit not Celsius) that I'm not entirely familiar or comfortable with. Add to that, the fact that I was converting from Australian measurements and recipes to US measures. A rose may well be a rose by any other name, but a cup is clearly not the same measure across nations. It was a daunting prospect having to cream butter and sugar by hand. I haven't done that in years and remember it as being labour intensive and arm-aching. But I was determined. So here's the recipe for a moist, tart orange cake with lemon and lime icing.

Orange Cake
(this is not a super sweet cake, in fact it's quite tart, but works very well with the icing and is delicious warm or cold)
1 US cup unsalted butter, softened (I put it in the microwave for 10 seconds to really soften it since I was creaming by hand)
1/4 tsp salt
1 US cup extra fine sugar
3 large (free range/cage free) eggs at room temperature (around 60g each - large but not jumbo)
1 tsp finely grated orange zest
1 1/2 US cups unbleached self-raising flour (I used King Arthur)
juice from 6 small-medium oranges (not navels, they're too big)

Method
Preheat oven to 340F.

Grease the sides and base of your roasting pan.

Microwave butter in mixing bowl for 10 seconds. Add salt. Using a whisk, begin creaming butter. Add extra fine sugar and cream butter and sugar together till light and fluffy (this takes about 10 − 15 minutes).

Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well for a few minutes after each egg. Don't rush the addition of the eggs as the mixture will be more likely to separate and develop a curdled appearance. Add the zest with the last egg.

Add half the flour and stir until just combined. Repeat with remaining flour. Mix in juice and aerate by whisking.

Spoon mixture into pan and smooth over so it's evenly spread.

Bake for 35 minutes. A skewer inserted should come out clean and the cake should spring back when lightly pressed in the centre.

Remove the cake from the oven and allow to cool in the pan (it will come away from the sides on its own). I left the cake in the pan and poured the icing over the top.

Lemon-lime Icing
1 1/2 US cups icing/powdered sugar
juice of 1 lemon and 3 limes
1 tbsp butter

Method
Put a plug in the kitchen sink and fill with very hot water. Place your mixing bowl with all ingredients into the water bath (sink) and whisk ingredients together. The icing will be quite runny. Let sit for 5 minutes or so and it will thicken. Pour over the cake and spread evenly.

Slice and enjoy!