Orange-Glazed Olive Oil Cake with Fleur de Sel

I luurv citrus flavours, and probably my favourite muffin of all time is this orange one, which uses an entire raw orange, ground up in a food processor. I’ve also made Passover cakes that employed whole citrus that have been boiled first to get rid of some of the pith’s bitterness. This cake, from a Bill Yosses’ book, follows the latter technique, and was okay, but not great.

The recipe is from his book, The Perfect Finish. Since an orange is pretty big, compare to, say, a clementine, the directions call for quartering the fruit before boiling. This makes the flesh very soft, so by the end of the simmering, they’re almost completely falling apart.

Orange-Glazed Olive Oil Cake with Fleur de Sel

I liked that this recipe could be made completely in the food processor. Unfortunately, the results were a bit lacklustre. I found the cake a bit too dense, and a bit dull and one-dimensional. The best part was the fresh orange glaze poured over top, that pools at the base of each slice, and gets absorbed as it sits for a few days.

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