You see, Dear Reader, I had oranges and lemons from the cranberry bread (10 oranges for a buck. I had to get the full 10. Sorry. Too good a price- The lemons were 3 for a buck), spices, sugar, flour, vanilla, baking soda... No eggs though, and I really don't want to spend the $$ for eggs...
But I have this program, you see... It's the Joy of Cooking, in computer program form. Great reference, no matter what edition or what form it takes, it's the Joy. So I went digging through the disc. I was looking for something sweet, not a lot of thought or prep to it that would use a lot of citrus.
There's a recipe called UltraOrange Cake (Vegan)... No eggs. It's vegan, right? Wait. It'll require some weird thing that you don't have... No, you have all that... Hm. Ok. Let's make it and see what we come up with.
The original recipe is as follows. My changes are made in the parentheses. And comments follow.
Ultra Orange Cake- Vegan
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour one 8x8 pan or line the bottom with parchment paper.
Whisk together thoroughly in a large bowl:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
Add and stir together until smooth:
1 cup orange juice (I squeezed 3 oranges and 1 large lemon and got a cup of juice)
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon grated orange peel (I just grated the peels from 2 of the oranges I squeezed)
1 tablespoon white or cider vinegar (I used cider vinegar)
1 teaspoon vanilla (plus a little splash... I like vanilla)
Scrape the batter into the pan and spread evenly. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 30-35 minutes. Let cool in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes. Slide a thin knife around the cake to detach it from the pan. Invert the cake and peel off the paper liner, if using. Cool right side up on the rack.
Now... I like things that don't require a lot of prep, that don't dirty a lot of dishes (I still have to wash them, you know), that use ingredients in new and unusual ways. This uses baking soda and vinegar. C'mon, guys, we all remember the volcano experiment in grade school science class. It foams. It makes foam. When you put that with flour and sugar and flavor, it makes cake, too.
I stirred together the dry ingredients. You could sift, I suppose, but I just stirred really well. Made them fluffy.
Then I grated the oranges over my 2 cup glass measuring cup, squeezed in the citrus and got pretty much a cup of juice.
Then I added in the oil to bring it to 1 1/3 cups. Then I threw in the vinegar and the vanilla. It makes about a cup and a half of stuff.
Stir it all together, blend in with the dry ingredients. Sing Don Ho's Tiny Bubbles, pour it into the pan.
Tally so far? 1 dirty bowl, 1 dirty fork (my whisk is in the dishwasher already and I'm lazy), 1 dirty set of measuring spoons, 1 dirty glass measuring cup. The dry measuring cups don't get washed. They're shaken clean, rinsed if necessary and put away.
So there's not a lot of dirty dishes with this.
It's quick, easy, not messy.
Hm. It probably tastes like garbage, right?
No. The batter (and no worries about salmonella from eggs with this one) is TASTY. Supertasty, really. So let's see how the cake looks when I take it out...
Hm. Never mind looks, it's just a cake.
But the smell.
Orange-y. Very orange-y. I like this. Let's let it cool, then get it out of the pan for a little taste....
AHA. Hm. It fell apart while inverting the pan. Not pretty. BUT! it didn't stick to the point of can't use it. I'll definitely use parchment next time.
What's that? How's it tas...
OH MY GOD. I love this cake. It's ugly as sin, but it's light, cake-y, moist, orange beyond all hope, smooth... Tastytasty. Mmmmm. Mine. All mine.
Oh. Sorry.
So I'll use parchment next time I make it, but this is a good recipe, even with my machinations into it, and I like not using eggs in it because I'm more likely to have baking soda and vinegar on hand.
Kid friendly recipe, nothing to gross them out, no cutting required (if you use over the counter orange juice), easy to fix.
I wonder how it would taste with just lemons... Hm.
Or blood oranges, or limes......
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