But I'm Still Hungry: YUMMY BAKING

It's Saturday afternoon, and a windy Autumn day. I think I'll bake a cake....

Enough of the easy stuff, the simple stuff, the stuff you fling together with your eyes closed! Today I want to experiment with sweet flavours and nice aromas. Today I'll bake this:

SPICED CARROT SYRUP CAKE

I spied it in the Coffs Harbour Advocate a couple of weeks ago....

Here's one "TheHomeEmpress" prepared earlier

I suppose I should give you the list of ingredients beforehand - not as I go, just so you can be sure you have them handy (I think you just may.. it's one of those cakes that uses a lot of pantry items).

90g Sultanas (I think that was about a handful)

2Tablespoons Orange Juice (you're going to use the rest of the orange later)

150g SR Flour ('normal' or gluten free)

1 cup almond meal (I'm going to try and make the almond meal from flaked almonds)

2/3 cup brown sugar (pressed down, shaken together, nearly overflowing)

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1tsp ground nutmeg

1/2 tsp ground cloves

150g butter (or margarine - salted or unsalted)

2 eggs (whisked a bit)

2 carrots (peeled and grated)

2 tsp grated orange rind

SYRUP: 60ml (1/4 cup) HONEY; 2 Tbspn ORANGE JUICE; 2 tsp ORANGE ZEST (that's just the orange stuff - none of the white bits)

OK, First things first: We need to marinate some sweetness before we even think of anything else. Marinating, soaking.... all those melding verbs infer that the ingredients are to do nothing in haste. They wait outside each other's door and knock; they don't barge in unannounced and demand unity. While marinating, foods and liquids ask each other to accompany them in a slow dance of alchemy while all the other ingredients hustle and bustle in a large bowl in preparation for the marinatee's later arrival. It can never take too long, but is best not pushed too quickly (lest they reject each other and there is no blending, no alchemy - you may as well not have bothered).

So we'll marinate the orange juice and sultanas for a while....

Take an orange and juice it - keep the orange skins for later

Now leave them alone to do that thing they do; while I charge up my camera. No point turning the oven on until I can continue - but you can... the usual: 280/350 depending on which hemisphere you live in. We should probably prepare the cake tin now too (if you're wondering how - go back and read the Moist Orange Poppy Seed Cake recipe).

shhhhh..... we'll come back to them later

I'm back, and so is my camera: Sometimes nothing seems easy...

But this was easy: I took these (cheaper, less processed almonds) and turned them into this almond meal with my trusty food processor (just buy almond meal if you don't have some sort of processing implement - it's just too troublesome to chop any sort of nut into a meal without a processor):

then you put them into a bowl with the flour, sugar and spices. (yes you can sift the flour, and I didn't have ground cloves, so YES, I ground it myself (with a big knife??)

In another bowl, put together the grated carrot, eggs, melted (and cooled) butter/marg, orange rind & the perfectly synched sultanas/
orange mix

Stir the dry ingredients together, then make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients for you to add the sloppy ingredients into:

Mix it till it looks kinda like this:

(I needed another egg... the mix was dry - that's called ad libbing)

Then put it in that oven quick smart.

While that's cooking - for 45 minutes, clean the huge mess you just made because the dogs brought something in from the garden, your daughter has her friend and niece over and their making a mess in the bedroom and other part of the house, your girlfriend's called in to use the loo, and now you don't know what happened to some of the photo uploads. In the meantime, this cake is becoming bigger than Ben Hur, and your father's due to come and watch the footy.... and you promised you show him photos of Penrith in the old days that you found on Facebook.
Initially, the cake was to be for a morning tea, then it was going to replace lunch (because who wants to cook TWO things at the same time..., then afternoon tea faded into the distance and it really wasn't looking like anyone was going to have any. I finally got rid of everyone except dad - so we'll eat the cake - but can his taste buds be trusted to give me satisfactory feedback.
On a day like today, the poor darling better tell me it's fantastic!!

While the cake is cooking... (sorry, got carried away) make the syrup.
Pretty much: put all those ingredients into a little, tiny frying pan (or a bit of a bigger one...) bring it to a rolling boil for a minute, simmer for a little while longer until you can smell honey and orange... but then turn it off, because it's only a second or so after that that it flows over the edges and starts to make a mess.

Then take it off the stove, as this process takes only a few minutes, try and leave it till the cake is ready and out of the oven.

Prick holes all over the cake: Put the cake (in the tin) on top of a plate, because you don't want this all over your kitchen bench.