Mistress160's Abode: Brunch with a friend ... and an excellent cup cake recipe

On Sunday morning we met our friend MissLis for brunch in Crown St.

We spent a very pleasant couple of hours enjoying excellent food and chatting about all things kinky, mutual friends, life as eco kinksters, Domme retreats, real time workshops, cyber kink courses and ...well, I'll keep the final part of the conversation secret for a while. Because MissLis has very kindly agreed to write a blog post for me about this very special party she is attending in the near future *grin*...

MissLis arrived bearing an exquisite box filled with home baked cup cakes for sol's birthday. I often buy cup cakes but they are often all show and no substance, if you know what I mean. When you encounter one with great flavor it really makes your day. And these were absolutely superb.

MissLis told me later she had used a favorite recipe of mine but had altered one ingredient: replacing oranges with mandarins, which are currently in season here in Oz. This produced a very delicate scent and flavor, and the slight bitterness made the cakes perfect for sol, who's not a great eater of sweet things (apart from myself, of course).

The cup cakes that were left - after sol and I munched our way through the box - were a great hit at the very elegant femdom tea party we attended later that afternoon, where there were calls for the recipe. MissLis has kindly provided it:

Claudia Roden's Middle Eastern Orange Cake

The tin should be big enough so that the batter is no deeper than 6cm, otherwise the cake will take much longer to cook. This recipe made me 18 cupcakes so it is a big cake!

2 large oranges, washed (I used mandarins, and you could use any citrus I think)
6 eggs, beaten
250g ground almonds
250g sugar
1 teaspoon of baking powder

Boil the oranges, barely covered with water, in a covered saucepan for 2 hours. Allow to cool, cut open, remove the pits and chop roughly, including the rind.
Preheat an oven to 190 degrees Celcius and butter and flour a 24cm springform tin. Blend oranges and eggs thoroughly in a food processor. Mix ground almonds, sugar and baking powder in a large bowl, then add orange mixture and whisk to combine. Pour batter into prepared tin and bake for 45mins - 1 hour, unless the cake is very wet (in which case cook longer). Cool them in the tin before turning out.

I think you could easily do this without a food processor. Basically the citrus is so fragile when you de-seed it that you can chop finely or maybe even mash and you'd get a very similar result.

Good luck! It's very easy!