Citrus Winter

Hello everyone and helllooo 2017!

So I started typing this post before Christmas and below is the proof....

"As I am beginning to type this post, there is Christmas music playing in our home. My brother is singing along to it, my sister is attempting to like his singing skills...my mom is scanning Pinterest to try new things...my dad is shifting his eyes between CNN news on TV and Times of India on his computer. And I am smiling because I cannot stop counting blessings."

But as we all know, the holidays makes us lazier than the norm! And yes, I agree that it is a pathetic excuse even when I have a guilty smile on my face.

Moving on to the blog post after two weeks ...

Past summer, majority of my time was contributed to baking different types of loaves. I would rather say experimenting with some of the names I read at Starbucks while waiting to order my usual iced coffee. It included lemon loaves, blueberry lemon cake, banana nut bread, carrot cake, and even zucchini bread (yes people zucchini...thanks to Pinterest).

This holiday season was no different when it came to good food with great people. I decided to bake an orange cake for la familia. I only lean towards orange in cooking when it comes to Christmas season. Then again, I feel like I would say the same thing about any fruits and vegetables if I used it during holiday season (my face = grinning face emoji).

I took about 154 pictures in total to be on the safe side....In the beginning I realized I am just paranoid...and then I continued to take more pictures and convinced myself that it is better to be safe than sorry (my face = nerd face emoji).

Laying out the ingredients...pretty much grabbed everything because I am too lazy to walk back and forth

Cracked four eggs into the bowl

   

After beating the eggs....splash of vanilla...

  Into it goes 1/4 cup of oil

Just another picture of oil movement

Two or three table spoons of yogurt (I want to try with lemon yogurt next time)

Zest of two oranges....I wish I added more to be honest 

Then squeeze the juice from two oranges

Now onto the dry ingredients....Sift 2 cups of flour (yes that's Malayalam newspaper on the bottom ^.^)

Here are the ingredients up close....I also added 3 tsp of baking powder after the flour was sifted

Just keep mixing

Thought this looked good enough

But mix more? (my face = thinking face emoji)

And it all goes into a buttered pan...

Baked until a toothpick comes out clean (about 45 to 50 mins at 350oC depending on the oven)

Dusted in icing sugar 

More pictures because why not

Last picture I swear (my face = nerd face emoji)

And there you have it! The baking part was the easy task, cleaning up after and deciding from 154 pictures was the difficult part for me. Taste testers aka my parents and siblings said that they had hard time picking out the orange flavor. I could have added more orange zest or use orange extract to really enhance the flavor. Another option could be adding a citrus glaze instead of dusting the sugar on top.

I hope you guys enjoyed reading this post as much as I loved writing it. Let me know if you guys make this at home in the comment box below. I am sure it will be a hit regardless of holiday season (my face = winky face emoji).

Secretly always in holiday spirit,

Ben