Blood Orange Pound Cake Recipe
An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott
Recipe Overview
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 70 minutes
Serves: 6-8 people
Ingredients Needed
- 350g/12.3ozs caster or superfine sugar
- 250g/8.8ozs cake flour
- 1/4 cup/38g/1.3ozs vanilla custard powder*or cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon fine salt
- 225g/0.5lb salted butter, softened to between 24-25°C/75.2-77°F, cut into small cubes
- 4 eggs, room temperature
- 50ml/1.7flozs blood orange juice
- 2 tablespoons finely grated blood orange zest
For Blood Orange Frosting
- 150g/5ozs icing or powdered sugar
- 2-3 tablespoons blood orange juice
- 20 pistachios, skinned
- 12 very thin slices blood orange zest
Step-By-Step Instructions
Step 1 - Preheat oven to 140C/284F fan forced or 160/320F conventional and line a 19x10.5x11cm or 7.75x4.25x4.5inch loaf tin with parchment on the base and sides. Whisk the sugar, cake flour, custard powder and salt together with a balloon whisk in a mixer bowl. Fit the mixer with a paddle attachment and set it on low speed.
Step 2 - Drop the butter cubes into the mixer bowl one by one. The batter will look sandy then will look a bit like buttercream. Whisk the eggs, blood orange juice and zest together in a jug. Increasing the speed of the mixer to medium and add the protective collar if you have one to avoid the batter splashing. Add the egg mixture in a steady, thin stream until it comes together. Scrape down the sides and mix on medium for 5 seconds more. Scoop into the prepared tin and smooth over the top with an angled spatula. Bake for 65-70 minutes or until the centre crack rises - if you press it gently, it should spring back when done. Cool in the tin for 30 minutes. Then remove from the tin.
Step 3 - To make the frosting, sift the icing sugar into a bowl (Thermomix tip: set to 8 seconds, speed #8) and add the blood orange juice gradually so that it is not too thin but can still be spooned over the cake and drip slowly down the sides. Add pistachios and orange zest strips before the frosting sets.
Personal Note
I love how scientific baking is and how one little thing can make such a difference with the end result. I love the texture of these pound cakes and ever since I came across reverse creaming, I've been making them like this for years. I feel like it has been a mystery solved. Mr NQN and I were talking about mysteries one day over lunch.
One of the mysteries that I wanted to answers to have been solved about Elisa Lam at the Cecil Hotel and how she ended up in the water tank (it was accidental drowning due to psychosis induced misadventure). Then Mr NQN told me that his biggest mystery that he wanted to know what was happened to MH370 and I concurred about that one.
Then Monica said that the mystery she wanted solved was whether ghosts were real and whether you can really talk to them. Laura's mystery was where the body of Lynette Dawson from The Teacher's Pet and what did Robert Durst do to his wife while her boyfriend Adrian's mystery was what happened with JFK and where is the gold from the Amber room that was stolen by the Nazis in World War II!
And another one for me, I also want to know whether ghosts just hang around watching you have showers!
So tell me Dear Reader, have you ever tried reverse creaming a cake? And what is the mystery that you really want solved now?
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