ORANGE AND GINGER BUNDT CAKE

I made this cake for the recent Loire Valley CCC meeting, the theme of which was “Love is in the air”.  Orange and ginger are amongst the few flavours that Nick actually likes in a cake.

I knew that I would like to make a Bundt cake and now have a small collection of Bundt tins.  The question was, which one to use?*

The theme of the cake was to be LOVE and I had a suspicion that there would be lots of chocolate and hearts on the table so I wanted to do something different.  Looking at my tins, the mountainous peaks of this tin led me to think of the song “River deep, mountain high” by Ike and Tina Turner – how many decades ago was that – I dread to think.  This was one of my favourite love songs when I was much, much younger and so I called this my “River deep, mountain high Bundt cake”.

I adapted the basic Bundt cake recipe that I often use, which originates from Dollybakes and you can see here.  I made sure there was ample orange and ginger in it and I have to say, it was delicious.

Yogurt begins with the letter Y and the cake has a good amount of yogurt in it so I am submitting it to this month’s Alphabakes Challenge which you can see here.  It’s a monthly event organised alternately by Caroline of Caroline Makes and Ros of The more than occasional baker.

*I spotted this Bundt tin when it was going cheap on Lakeland’s website and I swooped.  Soon afterwards it was sold out.

Ingredients

225g softened butter

450 golden caster sugar

4 eggs

350g plain flour

½ tsp bicarb

½ tsp salt

350g natural yogurt

3 heaped tsp ground ginger

zest of one large orange

3 balls of preserved ginger, rinsed and chopped

For the icing

250g icing sugar

2 tblsp syrup from the preserved ginger jar

approx 1 tbslp orange juice

Method

Spray or brush a large Bundt tin with cake release spray, or butter well and flour the inside. Preheat the oven to 160° C / 140° fan / gas mk 3.

Using a food mixer, beat the butter and sugar until fluffy.  Add the eggs one at a time, beating in between until well mixed.

Into another bowl, sift together the flour, bicarb, salt and ground ginger.  In a jug, mix together the yogurt and orange zest.

Add one third of the flour mixture to the mixer bowl and mix gently until combined, followed by half the yogurt mixture.  Repeat.  Remove the bowl from the stand and fold the last third of flour into the mixture along with the chopped ginger until evenly combined.

Spoon the mixture evenly into the prepared tin and bake for 1hour – 1hr 15 mins.  Check for doneness after an hour.

Cool in the tin for 10 mins then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

To make the icing, sift the sugar into a small bowl and add the ginger syrup.  Beat until smooth.  Add enough orange juice to achieve the runniness you require and spoon onto the top of the cake so that it runs down the grooves.

Serves 12 or more slices.