Baked Sunday Mornings: Mom's Olive Oil Orange Bundt (Better Late than Never)

After mixing up my dates for two of Baked Sunday Mornings' selections, I am now finally posting about the Olive Oil Orange Bundt that the rest of the group made nearly a month ago. I am so glad I decided not to just skip it; it was so worth the wait!

It is a pretty straightforward bundt cake recipe. The only major difference between this cake and bundt cakes I have made before is the incorporation of olive oil. It takes the place of butter or any other oil in the cake, so its presence is definitely noticed in the finished product. Fresh orange zest is added to the batter, and it gives the cake such a fresh, bright flavor. Finally, the method of separating the egg whites from the yolks and whipping them before adding them to the batter makes it a bit lighter in texture than other, denser bundt cakes.

I was kinda grateful that others had made this before me, because I could learn something from their tips. The most important lesson I learned from the other bloggers was that I should cut down on the baking time, just slightly. I believe I checked the cake around 37 minutes, and it was just right. The recipe, as written, indicates more like 40-50 minutes. I don't know how much of a difference it made for my cake, but mine was perfect as is.

I hope the other members of Baked Sunday Mornings enjoyed making the Coffee Ice Cream that I made by mistake last month! You can see their results on the main blog, here. To see how everybody liked this Olive Oil Bundt, you can click on the blog post about it over on the main blog, here.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Orange Creamsicle Tart

This weekend's recipe for Baked Sunday Mornings is getting us back to what we know and love about this ever-expanding group: an eye-catching, complicated confection that requires many steps and hours to make. What with us making Tomato Soup Cupcakes and Cowboy Cookies most recently, I was beginning to think those Baked boys had gone soft on us! The last two treats were easy to make, it's true, but finally with this week we're back with something showy and grand!



So, it's time for me to talk about this Orange Creamsicle Tart. What a project! It's basically a tart with a sweet crust infused with lots of orange zest. Next comes the bright, citrusy curd made from, among other things, real orange juice and lemon juice, plenty of citrus zest, and orange cream soda. The cream soda really gives it a wonderful flavor that you just would not get from a regular citrus curd. It was pretty divine; eating the curd straight reminds you of eating a melted creamsicle pop.

The next step was listed in the margin of this recipe in the book, and therefore optional, but I decided to go whole hog here and add it in. They instruct you to melt some white chocolate and then brush it all over the baked, cooled tart shell before adding any curd. It's supposed to prevent the crust from becoming soggy. In my opinion, it added a whole other layer of flavor that would have been missed here. It was truly inspired, I thought. As a crowning touch, fresh whipped cream that has been sweetened with a bit of sugar and a couple tablespoons of orange cream soda is spread over the top of the tart.

Though the tart took me the better part of an entire day to complete, it was totally worth every single step. The tart is divine, unique and delicious and a real conversation piece. If I'm not going for a chocolate dessert, my default is always something citrus. I can see this dessert coming to mind plenty in the future if I ever want to make something dreamy and luscious and non-chocolate. I hope everybody who made this agreed that it was a real doozy (and I mean that as a compliment!). Make sure to check out the blogroll, here.

CEIMB: Savory Chinese Chicken Salad

This week's Craving Ellie in My Belly recipe was Savory Chinese Chicken Salad, hosted by Danica of Danica's Daily. I found that this salad could not have come at a better time. I've been eating out way too much this past week, so a nice, refreshing homemade salad such as this was just what I needed. On the evening I prepared it, putting everything together was a snap, and I think that had something to do with the fact that we had roasted a whole chicken two days prior and I had set some aside specifically for this recipe. It definitely helped to already have the chicken cooked.



The rest of the ingredients for this salad are easy to assemble, too. It's cabbage (I used a whole head of Napa cabbage and skipped the two cabbages in the original recipe), carrots, scallions, a can of sliced water chestnuts, a can of sliced mandarin oranges, and some almonds to garnish. Even though Ellie said to slice the almonds, I decided they would be nice on there whole so I just served it that way.

The dressing is a mash-up of so many of my favorite Asian flavors. There's soy sauce and rice vinegar, ginger and garlic, brown sugar, sesame oil, and sriracha (our new favorite condiment). I actually left the canola oil out of the dressing, and I loved it. I am usually decreasing the oils in my homemade dressings just to make them lower in fat, but here I really liked just having sesame oil in there for the flavor aspect. I only used 1 Tablespoon, and I felt like it was plenty of oil. I do wish I had spinkled some sesame seeds over the finished salad, but overall I loved this. I adore the ease, the lack of cooking required, and it packs a huge punch of flavor for something so healthy and quick. I'm pretty excited that I get to have the leftovers for lunch tomorrow!



Thanks to Danica for the perfect pick this week. I feel silly now for overlooking this Ellie recipe for so long! I think the mandarin oranges were scaring me away, since I don't really eat them. Now I know I have nothing to fear! They almost melted away in the salad, leaving only that great citrus flavor. I'm happy I didn't leave them out like I was tempted to do.

If you'd like this recipe, you can find it on Food Network's website, here. For the CEIMB blogroll, click here.