Friday, September 12, 2008

Grapefruit Cakes


My friend gave me a bag of grapefruit and tangelos from her tree and the same weekend the latest Taste magazine arrived with a recipe in if for grapefruit cake. I thought it sounded interesting as I wasn’t sure how the bitterness of grapefruit would translate into a cake. I made the recipe in the weekend. Instead of making one large cake, I halved the recipe and made 7 little cakes in brioche moulds.

These cakes turned out really yummy. They were very moist and the grapefruit added an interesting note – like you know that they are citrusy but you’re not quite sure which citrus fruit. There is grapefruit zest and juice in the cake mixture and the icing is simply icing sugar made into a pourable icing with grapefruit juice. You could substitue any other type of citrus for the grapefruit. The cakes lasted well – the last one got eaten yesterday, so that is four days in the tin which isn’t bad for a cake. I imagine that they would freeze really well too. Making smaller cakes gives a bit more flexibility than making a large cake.

Earlier in the week I made a yummy dinner which I thought I would share. We like to eat fresh fish, but like everything else it is getting more and more expensive. When I was at the supermarket the other day they had hoki on special for $12 a kilo. Now hoki is not my preferred fish, but I bought some and it was delicious! I cooked it simply by coarsely grinding equal amounts of cumin and coriander seeds which I mixed with some sea salt and cracked pepper and sprinkled on the fish. I flash roasted the fish at 220c for 10 minutes and it was perfect. We had the fish with baked kumara (cut into wedges and baked with a drizzle of oil) and a baby spinach salad and dressing of lime juice, sweet chilli sauce, sesame oil and fish sauce. It was yummy with nice clean flavours!



Grapefruit Cake (from Taste magazine – I halved the recipe to get 7 small cakes)

250g butter
1 1/3 c castor sugar
4 eggs
finely grated zest of 2 grapefruit
½ c grapefruit juice
2 c flour
3 tsp baking powder

· Cream butter and sugar, then add eggs one at a time.
· Fold in zest and juice, then fold in flour and baking powder
· Spoon into a greased 20cm fluted tin and bake at 180c for 1 hour or until the point of a small sharp knife comes out clean
Once cold ice with a simple icing using enough grapefruit juice to thin down 2c icing sugar to a pourable consistency.

3 comments:

Deb said...

I wondered what that would be like. I have never been a fan of grapefuit, but those little cakes look kinda cute. Having heard your take on them, it puts them into the will probably make pile, rather than the eewww grapefruit cake pile!

Mari said...

I posted about a citrus cake last week, that also had grapefruit, as well as lemon and orange, it was a gorgeous cake. I was also curious about grapefruit in cake, but thought it worked really well. Your little cakes look delish, I'll be sure to the add this recipe to my "to bake" list.

ingegerd said...

they look so yummy!