Provamel Cookery Challenge : Orange Bundt Cake

We always love getting involved in cookery challenges here at The Madhouse and, you may remember, last year I impressed even myself by managing to recreate a superb Autumn Fruits Pavlova and Eton Mess following recipes sent through by Provamel. Well, they've thrown down the gauntlet again !

This time, they sent me some ingredients and the recipe that I would need to make an Orange and Redbush Yogurt Bundt Cake. As the name suggests, the star ingredient is Provamel Orange and Redbush Yogurt which I recently reviewed here on my blog. Now, if like me, you're wondering what Bundt cake is, it's one of those cakes that is in the shape of a ring. Not having a Bundt tin, mine will just be a regular cake shape though.

The recipe is as follows :

Orange and Redbush Yogurt Bundt Cake

Preparation Time: 1 hr

Cooking Time: 45 mins

Serves: 8-10 portions

Ingredients

250ml of Provamel Orange and Redbush Botanical Yogurt

 225g soft butter, plus a little extra for greasing the tin

300g caster sugar

6 free-range eggs

350g plain flour ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

Zest of one orange

¼ tsp Sicilian orange extract (optional)

1 tbsp icing sugar for decoration

Method

Oven temperature : 180ºC/350ºF/Gas Mark 4 

- Pre-heat the oven and place a baking tray on the middle shelf with enough room for your bundt tin. Grease the bundt tin well with melted butter. 

- Using a wooden spoon, cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until light and fluffy. (I used margarine so that it was much easier to cream and also lower on the calories.)

- Whisk in the eggs one at a time using an electric hand whisk on the lowest setting – add in a little of the flour after each egg. Add in the zest, orange extract, remaining flour, bicarbonate of soda and Provamel Orange and Redbush Botanical Yogurt and carefully fold in using a metal spoon. (I whisked mine by hand with a fork and it worked fine.)

- Pour the mixture into your prepared bundt tin and level out. - Place in a preheated oven for 45-60 mins.

 Before removing the cake from the oven, make sure it is cooked through by inserting a metal skewer – if it comes out clean, the cake is cooked through; if not, then return the cake to the oven for a few more minutes.

- After removing from the oven, allow the cake to cool for 15-20 mins before carefully removing from the mould and dusting with icing sugar.

Well, this is where I parted ways with the recipe slightly. Although the cake smelt lovely and orangey, I thought that the kids would complain it looked a bit boring so I knocked up some very quick butter icing, added some red and yellow food colouring to give it a lovely orange colour, mixed in some of my Steenbergs Organics orange essence and spread it all over the top of the cake. I finished off with a sprinkling of hundreds and thousands. As you can see, this met with the Madhouse Mini-testers' approval !

It's a lovely moist cake with a definite orange flavour. It could possibly be improved with the addition of some candied peel to give it some extra zing, if you don't fancy our icing and multi-coloured sprinkles approach ! I actually thought it tasted better the next day than fresh from the oven. (How sad is it that the slice of cake is on a Dora the Explorer plastic plate when it is for me! That definitely says a lot about my life!)

for more recipe ideas : http://www.provamel.co.uk/vegetarian-recipes-vegan-recipes/Dessert.htm

Other reviews you may be interested in :

Provamel Orange & Redbush

Provamel Botanical Yogurts

More recipes to try from Provamel