The Orange Blossom Special

I have been baking a lot recently. I think it’s because usually I make cakes for celebrations and associate cake with being happy, so when I am depressed or unhappy I bake to cheer myself up. Oddly enough I don’t feel the need to eat what I’ve made as if I’m honest I prefer something savoury.

The first time I cooked myself to a better mood was April, it was the week I stumbled on the most amazing recipe for Sussex Pond Pudding [recipe here] (which I subsequently made, but with disastrous results (a story for another time)).

The problem with needing to bake away depression is you don’t necessarily have the opportunity to go shopping for missing ingredients and it’s a matter of taking pot luck with what’s in the cupboards. So possessing as I did almost the entire worlds harvest for cashew nuts 2007 (they weren’t the freshest of nuts admittedly) a cashew heavy recipe was required and Google shortly provided

One of the first things to come up on Google was Allegra McEvedy’s Orange Blossom, cashew and semolina cake [recipe here]… I just loved the idea of it, I think it was the orange blossom that did it, as it always sounds so exotic and the idea of a fragrant cloud of orange blossom scenting my kitchen as the cake baked made me forget that I almost always have been disappointed in the things I’ve made using it.

Since I had all the ingredients to hand (apart from the rosemary which I “borrowed” from a complete strangers garden) I started it as soon as I got home, and yes, the kitchen smelt wonderful but not of orange blossom – If I’d read all the recipe up front I would have realise the orange blossom is  added to a sugar syrup which is poured over the cake 30 minutes after removing it from the oven.

The cake was very fresh and rich and buttery, reminiscent of a Nigella Lawson recipe I once made where half the usual ingredients are replaced by marzipan, not surprising really since marzipan is largely almonds, so the principle is the same. The cake was very nice I’m told, but left me feeling disappointed, I guess I had built the anticipation of eating it in my mind a bit too much…making it cheered me up though.

No photo, I have not, up to now at any rate been in the habit of photographing my cakes…