Clementine and Blood Orange Pound Cake

March 9, 2011 — basisfoods, food52, olive oil, oranges, pound cake

I can’t believe I managed to get a cake in this oven this morning. It’s a Wednesday miracle. No seriously. I went out with some co-workers last night to Hill Country. We feasted and drank our usual tables worth of Bullets so it’s a shock that I am actually up and functional enough to make a cake. Granted, I only had two but if you’ve ever had HC’s magical concoction of Big Red, Bullet Bourbon, and Spiced Rum you know they are not to be toyed with. We have one legendary night where we drank 18 between 4 of us. No, I do not remember the following day.

Anyways, I really wanted to share this cake with you. So much so that I pulled out all of the ingredients yesterday morning so I would be all ready to bake.

The ingredients are interesting with a mix of cardamon and orange. Weird right? I really don’t even know what to relate cardamon too. I never had it in my spice cabinet until recently. Whenever a recipe called for it I would look up a substitute (nutmeg and cinnamon mixed).

I also felt it necessary to get another order of citrus before the season was over so I had more clementines to deal with and a cake is clearly the best way to do that. While I will say that I am sick of oranges, I was wayyyy more sick of apples in the fall so I’m happy to keep getting this bright bag from Basis every other Monday. This past week’s renewed enthusiasm has a lot to do with the fact that I’ve started to make sherbet! So good.

Ok, onto the cake. This is the first time I’ve made a pound cake. The reviews say it’s good to let it sit a day so we’ll talk about the recipe today and review the sucker tomorrow.

Adapted recipe below. As always, this is a editor’s gem from Food52. I promise I will be switching up my sources this weekend!

Serves 10-12
• 1 1/2 sticks butter, softened, plus more for the pan
• 1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour, plus more for the pan
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract or paste
• 1 teaspoon ground cardamom
• 1 tablespoon clementine zest, from about 2 clementines
• 1/3 cup of juice, from about 2 clementines (I also added in the juice of one blood orange just for kicks)
• 1/4 cup milk

1. Heat the oven to 350F. Butter and flour a 9x5x3″ loaf pan.

2. Cream the butter, olive oil and sugars together until smooth. This should be very, very smooth. I left mine beating for at least 5 minutes

3. Mix in the eggs, one at a time, until completely blended. Not only completely blended but whipped in. The end result should look like whipped icing. There is no baking soda or baking powder in this recipe so the eggs and butter have to do all the work. It’s important to get some air in there.

4. Stir in 1 cup of the flour, followed by the salt, vanilla, cardamom, clementine zest and juice.

5. Add the milk and the rest of the flour. Beat until the batter is smooth and consistent, but do not over-beat!

6. Scrape the cake batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake for about 1 hour and 15 minutes, until the edges are browned and just pulling away from the sides of the pan, and a cake tester inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean.

7. Allow to cool for 10 minutes in the pan. Run a knife or spatula around the edges of the cake to release it from the pan, and flip onto a wire rack to cool completely before slicing and serving.

A tad brown but looking good!