I didn't want winter to slip away without making the most of citrus. Grapefruit is one of my favourites, often overlooked in baking in favour of the more modest lemon. By contrast, grapefruits are super-size citrus, big and blowsy. There's pink grapefuit and ruby red, and of course, just regular. All are dazzlingly acidic and amazing in anything sweet. This loaf takes ingredients most often associated with lemon - yoghurt and poppy seeds - and reimagines them with grapefruit. To great success. Super easy. A celebration of citrus.
This cake is so good I made it twice in the space of a few hours. Never mind that this was because I forgot the baking powder the first time round and the cake came out of the tin beautifully golden but frisbee flat. My point is, I saw the error, weighed it up, and decided it was hardly any trouble to do it all again*. About an hour later, I had a perfectly risen cake, cooled, iced and ready to go. There were so few ingredients, I didn't even consult the recipe the second time, just made a mental note not to make the same mistake twice. This is a sweet, simple citrus cake made more sophisticated by its star ingredient: ruby grapefruit. Its juice and zest give a gorgeous warmth to the colour and a satisfyingly sour tang to the otherwise sweet crumb of the cake. A couple of days later, I packed some leftover slices for a weekend walk through bushland hugging the harbour. Surrounded by green, with blue skies, bluer water, and ruby grapefruit cake eaten outdoors with a view of it all, Sydney winter's sometimes not too bad.
* Lest you wonder what I did with the first cake, which still tasted great despite its density - I broke it up into big pieces and stashed it in the freezer. I couldn't bear to throw it out and figure I can use it to make trifle sometime. Buried under curd and cream, no-one's to know I forgot the baking powder.
It was my friend George's birthday. I asked her what sort of cake she would like and the request was for something seasonal. In April, when she was actually born, that would have meant one thing, but by mid-June, which is when we finally got together down on the Great Ocean Road, for a girls' weekend with our friend Gill, it was deepest, darkest winter which meant one thing: citrus.
It's impossible
to feel anything other than sunny when eating citrus, which is why it's
so wonderful at this time of the year where the wind howls, the light
dims and temperatures drop.
Grapefruit
is the bridesmaid of the citrus family, always overshadowed by oranges
and lemons. No-one ever thinks to do anything with it other than juice
it or slice it in half, both of which are more associated with diets and
cold remedies than anything you actually get excited about. So
here's what you do: you cook all that Vitamin C down into a rich, creamy
curd, then fold it through a batter flecked with pretty pink-orange
zest, reserving some to dollop on top. You decorate the finished cake
with candles, sing happy birthday, celebrate being friends for twenty
years and look forward to doing it all again soon.
I've been away. From this blog, from my apartment. While I was gone, some interstate friends came to stay at my place. Sadly, our paths didn't cross, but I had just enough time before leaving for the airport to make them a cake so I felt like there was a little bit of me there to greet them.
Though I was headed for summer later that day, it was winter in Sydney and that means citrus. The seasonality of that food family is consistently strange to me as its bright burst of flavour seems more suited to warmer months (when you feel like quenching your thirst with orange juice, tucking into grapefuit for breakfast or squeezing lime into gin and tonics) than the colder ones but maybe in these darker parts of the year we need it more. I'm sure nature had some sort of plan.
This cake is made with grapefruit, an underused citrus, in my opinion. It's fresh and zingy and pretty orange-pink (if you use the ruby sort, which I'm powerless to resist). The flavour comes from both its zest, and juice - which is intensified by boiling it down to half its quantity. No need to dirty a food processor or a stand mixer. Two bowls will suffice - one for the wet ingredients, one for the dry. The two come together, chopped chocolate is added and it bakes in the oven for just under an hour, enough time to pack a suitcase or have a cup of tea and read the paper (having packed well in advance), depending on what type of traveller you are. But whatever type that is, odds are you'll think about that cake all the time you're away and make it again upon your return... and eat two slices for morning tea with the heater on watching the rain, half in summer, half in winter, which through the haze of jetlag seems somehow very right.
