Spicy orange, walnut and date cake

It’s taken me a long time to post this recipe, as I wanted it to be a sort of pre-Christmas reflection post on all the excess and wastage and how nice it is in the craziness of the pre-Christmas blergh to reflect on all that is good and simple (with this nice comforting cake!).

But no matter how many times I drafted this blog, I ended up sounding like a preachy old grinch and hit delete, delete, delete! I think it is probably because I have not bought a thing for anyone yet and the impending doom that is pre-Christmas shopping, combined with the irritating smug satisfaction from people who tell me they finished their shopping in October and ordered their food a month ago makes me go all #stabby. So enough already! 

Jaffarons

It has been a while since I posted a macaron recipe. These jaffarons (or jaffas-macarons) are inspired by the wonderful Jaffas. I remember movie theatres with wooden stair aisles and the thrill (??) of someone rolling jaffas down the aisles during an intense scene in the movie (or during a particularly boring lecture at university!). That exhilarating plunk, plunk, plunk, plunk…. and everyone booing at the culprit who ruined the scene.

image sourced from the web

These macarons are an orange-coloured shell, topped with a bit of orange zest and filled with a chocolate-orange ganache. Typical jaffas have an orange-flavoured shell and are filled with soft chocolate (not orange flavoured chocolate), but its difficult to get a strong orange flavour in a macaron shell, so I improvised a bit. These macarons were not terribly photogenic, as the orange zest ‘melted’ the shell a bit, but oh my, they tasted a treat!

Carrot cupcakes with orange cream cheese icing

There are quite a few food marriages made in heaven: white chocolate and macadamia nuts (or caviar if you are Heston Blumenthal); dark chocolate and orange; eggs and bacon; asparagus and Hollandaise sauce; and salt and caramel. Way up in my top ten list is carrot cake and cream cheese icing. But sometimes three makes perfect and here, orange makes a wonderful triumvirate, going exceptionally well with carrot cake and cream cheese. Carrot cake recipes are everywhere and pretty much everyone who bakes has their own. So why would I suggest trying this recipe for carrot cake cupcakes? Simply because they are the softest, moistest and loveliest cupcakes you will ever taste. 

Orange and cardamom no-churn ice cream

I love the addition of cardamom in sweet things. Like adding salt or chilli to chocolate, it adds another dimension to the taste. Cardamom brings a tangy, fruity and very slightly peppery contrast the sweet foods and it’s perfect in combination with orange for this refreshing ice cream. It’s a no-churn ice cream because I don’t have an ice cream maker – nor do I want one – I just don’t have the room in my tiny unit.