Lady Lunchalot

The cooking urge took over last week when I spent a few days in Horsham. Something about that place makes me feel like a 1950s housewife, and my culinary adventures certainly had a retro feel.

I bought a huge bag of navel oranges for next to nothing (marmalade is on the horizon) so I decided to use a few for an orange upside down cake. I also baked a loaf of herb bread, a lasagne, a pot of chicken stock and made apricot chicken for the freezer. Apricot chicken… how nanna can you get?!

My orange upside down cake went something like this:

A few tablespoons of butter
1 cup of brown sugar
a sprinkle of allspice, nutmeg and cinnamon
1.5 cups of SR flour
pinch of salt
150g butter
2/3 cup of castor sugar
2 eggs
½ cup buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla essence
zest of 1 orange

Melt a few tablespoons of butter over a low heat. Mix in brown sugar and spices. Stir over the heat for a few minutes.

Peel and segment an orange or two, making sure to remove all the white pith.

Pour the sugar/butter mixture into a greased cake tin and place the orange segments in the mixture. Make a pattern by ensuring all the segments face the same way and overlap slightly, but don’t let them touch the sides of the tin.

Cream butter and sugar in a separate bowl until fluffy. Add eggs.

Sift flour, salt and spices together in a mixing bowl. Stir half of the flour into the creamed butter. Add buttermilk, zest and vanilla essence. Mix in the rest of the flour.

Pour gently into the cake tin, making sure not to disturb the pattern of oranges. Bake for about 45 minutes.

When the cake is ready and has cooled for about 10 minutes, put a plate over the top of the tin and flip it upside down. And voila! Lovely gooey, sugary orange upside down cake!