Baking

Whole Orange Blender Cake

A cake made by blending a whole orange, peel and all, with eggs, oats, yoghurt and maple syrup. There's no flour or sugar. It's dense and moist, somewhere between a sponge and a baked oat bar, and finished with orange icing.

Makes 8" round cake (10 slices) · Prep 10 mins · Cook 50-60 mins · 11 ingredients · 7 steps

Ingredients

• 1 navel orange (unwaxed, quartered)
• 3 eggs
• 160g rolled oats
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 60ml olive oil
• 65g Greek yoghurt
• 175ml maple syrup
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 90g icing sugar (for the icing)
• 1/2 orange (zested then juiced, for the icing)

Method

Cake

1. Heat the oven. Preheat your oven to 180C/160C Fan and line an 8" round cake tin with baking paper.
2. Prepare the orange. Rinse and dry the orange, cut off the stem end, and quarter it. Pick out any pips — the peel and pith stay in.
3. Blend the batter. Put the orange, eggs, rolled oats, baking powder, salt, olive oil, Greek yoghurt, maple syrup and vanilla extract into the blender in that order. Blend until completely smooth, with no flecks of peel or whole oats left, scraping down the sides once if it needs it.
4. Bake the cake. Pour the batter into the prepared tin and bake for 50-60 minutes, until the top is deep golden and a skewer pushed into the centre comes out clean.
5. Cool it. Leave the cake in the tin for 15 minutes to set, then turn it out onto a wire rack and let it cool completely.

Icing

6. Mix the icing. Whisk the icing sugar with the orange zest and enough of the juice to make a smooth, thick icing that falls off the spoon in a ribbon.
7. Drizzle. Pour the icing over the cooled cake and let it run down the sides.

Good to know

• Use an unwaxed orange, or scrub a waxed one well under hot water — every bit of the peel is eaten. Organic is worth it here if you can get it.
• The orange goes in first, next to the blade, so it is broken down before the oats thicken everything. A stubborn fleck of peel is a bitter mouthful; blend for longer rather than less.
• This is meant to be dense. Oats do not rise like flour, and the cake comes out closer to a moist baked oat bar than a sponge — that is the texture, not a mistake.
• For a lighter, more cake-like crumb, swap the oats for 220g plain flour (or a gluten-free flour) and stir it in by hand after blending, as in the Kiwi Drizzle Cake.
• Any neutral oil or melted butter works in place of the olive oil; soured cream in place of the yoghurt; and honey, agave or 150g caster sugar in place of the maple syrup.
• Other whole fruit works the same way: a large lemon, two limes, or a pear.
• The icing is optional. Bare, it is sweet enough for breakfast or with coffee; iced, it is a dessert.
• Ice only a completely cold cake, or the icing soaks in instead of setting on top.
• Keeps 3-4 days in an airtight container at room temperature, or up to 5 days in the fridge.