Cakes: Sour Milk Orange Cake

It's winter break time at the Olson house, and nobody knows what day of the week it is.  That's just the way we like it.  Neither Sarah nor I have had to go to work now for almost two weeks and won't be going back for a couple more days.  Time for projects!  Time for playing outside!  Time for cooking!  Time for family and friends!  Time for family and friends to be subjected to sixty year-old recipes!  I intended on making a few more recipes than I did, but there is still time to do one more after this, I think.  As I mentioned previously, we are into our second time through the cook book.  I skipped appetizers and breakfast cakes, as those are pretty short sections, and have moved onto the pretty large section on cakes.  If you'll remember, last time in this section, I made Scripture Cake, which was something of an adventure.  While there are some unanswered questions in our recipe this time around, it isn't quite as mysterious as the Scripture Cake was.

Making the sour milk orange cake was another case of me not looking at the recipe very closely before jumping in.  I got started making the cake before realizing that I didn't have dates.  I'm also not sure I would have picked this recipe had I seen it required dates.  I am not the biggest fan of dates.  Maybe it's just a matter of not having had good dates or fresh dates, I don't know.  Dates will always remind me of a long car ride with Sarah and her folks maybe eight years ago from Sierra Vista, Arizona to San Diego.  It was a long day of driving along I-8 through lots and of desert.  After several hours, we were in need of gas and a rest stop, so we stopped in Dateland, Arizona.  There were signs advertising date products of all sorts and that seemed to be about it.  Desert, and dates.  We all got out of the car to stretch our legs and made our way to a building where we could get a snack.  I don't recall whether or not we got a "world famous date shake" or not, but we probably got some ice cream.  At the counter was a rather bored-looking teenager.  Making friendly conversation, I asked her what she liked to do in her free time in Dateland.  She replied without hesitation, "think about getting out of here."

So now every time I have anything with dates, I think about that bored, stuck, teen-aged girl in Dateland.  Hope you made it out of Dateland and to somewhere more interesting.

There's no place like home, right tragic teenager??

Preparation

I'm here to write about a cake though, so here is the recipe for Sour Milk Orange Cake:

Mrs. Carl Green again

Maybe Mrs. Carl Green really likes dates, considering how she contributed the Scripture Cake too.  Looking back, I see that she did the Donut recipe I made too.  Both of those recipes were better than average, so we start here with optimism despite the dates.

Mise mostly en place

The first question was what to do with the fruit.  Reading the recipe, it talks about orange juice, so I juiced my orange and set that aside.  But then it says to grind together fruit and nuts.  I couldn't imagine that I would grind the whole orange rind.  That would be bitter and the texture couldn't be much better.  So I decided to zest the orange, and add that to the rest of the fruit.

Orange zest

Plus dates

and raisins and nuts equals this.

The raisin, date, zest, and nut mixture was really aromatic.  It smelled quite nice, actually.  Now, add half of the fruit mixture to the cake batter, and we're nearly there.

This was the closest to an 8" x 10" pan, and it worked out fine.

Now for clean-up.  You make the mess, you have to clean it up, I suppose.  Nobody else was around to help clean.

Life is rough when you're making cake.

The recipe calls for seven minute icing.  Maybe the method for making seven minute icing was common knowledge sixty years ago, but it is new to me.  There aren't any recipes in the cook book, so I turned to the internet.  There are plenty out there with slightly varying methods, but I settled on this one on Epicurious.  Basically, you make meringue but with lots of sugar, and you beat it in a double boiler.  The result was a lot like marshmallow fluff.  It is possible that I didn't beat the egg whites long enough, but I had been beating for more like 12 minutes and was ready to put down our super-loud mixer.

Not an icing expert, nor a neatness expert

Add the remaining half of the fruit and nut mixture.

Here is the final result!

The icing didn't really want to stay put.  It's a wonder it stayed on the plate at all.

Cut and ready to serve.

Tasting and Reaction

I brought the cake up to my sister's place for a Christmas pot-luck, so we had plenty of tasters.  I wasn't smart enough to take a picture of everyone eating the cake, nor to take a big family picture.  Oh well.  I stole some pictures from Facebook.

Isaiah, and Molly (their house and kitchen), April, and Mike (from D.L.)

Chris

Drew

Jasmine and little Eric

So there's our cast of characters (and characters, they are).  It was great to see everyone for Christmas.  We missed a few due to illness and the fact that some are currently on a different continent.  But we'll get some old recipes into their stomachs by next summer.  Anyway, here's how it all went down.

Chris - *holds his nose* joking. 

Sarah – the cake is a little dry.  I mainly taste frosting.  I like the subtle orange flavor though.

Chris – yeah.  The frosting is a little bit too much.  A little bitoo sweet.  But Ilike that you can definitely taste orange.  Not too dry.  Moist. 

Me – the frosting is kind of like marshmallow fluff.

Drew – It’s good.  It’s lika uh… pasty marshmallowy white frosting.  It’s good though.

Me – I’m not sure what I think about the frut/nut.  It makes the texture a little weird.

Jasmine – It’s like granola.

Molly – I like both them, the frosting and the cake.  It seems like a weird combo though.  You wouldn’t think of putting marshmallow on top.  I like the fruit crumble.

April – It’s good, but it’s a weird combo together… so I’m sitting here eating the frosting.  *laughs* I’m not a huge fan of the dates.

Sarah – I’m pretty sure I had this frosting on some sort of birthday cake when I was little.

Molly – I think mom made it too.

Sarah – It was probably in the shape of a cat.

Drew – A cat?

Sarah – I often had cat cakes when I was younger.  

Proof

Sure enough

I guess she was right.  Looks like seven minute icing to me.  Thanks, Carol and Gary for the picture.

So in the end, the cake was a little dense and dry for my tastes.  I was able to overlook the dates here, but I don't think that I would rush off to put a date/nut crumble on another cake.  The orange flavor was actually pretty nice.  I would have been nice though if the cake was a little lighter.  All in all, not too bad.  Good job Mrs. Carl Green.  We'll say that you're three for three.

Next time:  Cookies!