Video! Blood Orange and Olive Oil Cake

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I’m so excited to share with you my first little film! Here’s what Arjun and I usually do on Sunday mornings: visit the Place des Fetes market and come home and make a meal together with whatever we find at the market. In this video, we potter around the market and bring home some gorgeous blood oranges to bake with.

Making this video was so much fun. From getting the market vendor to let me play with his fruits, despite the “Ne toucher pas” sign everywhere, to having an egg roll down the table and crack open while filming, I ended up learning a lot: camera angles, lighting, storyboarding, editing, 7 hours of Lynda Premiere Pro tutorials, etc.

I spent an unreasonable amount of time trying to pick the right music only to come back to something I already had only my computer, but failed to take into consideration: one of my favourite Swedish bands, Detektivbyrån. As much as I enjoy French Musette and the music from Amélie, I wanted to veer away from the the clichés.

This is my first video, and it isn’t perfect (spot the unmanned tripod reflected in my mixing bowl at 2:58!), but I’m just so thrilled about having acquired another skill that I hope to continue to work on and get better at.

This video is all thanks to a two week Skillshare class I took by Katrina Tan Conte, which gave me the much needed kick in the pants.

Blood Orange and Olive Oil Cake

Adapted from: NY Times
Yield: 8-10 servings

3 blood oranges*
1 cup (200g) sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup (125g) yogurt
3 large eggs
1 3/4 cups (200g)all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

To serve:
Vanilla blood orange compote and crème fraîche

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 170ºC.
2. Brush a loaf pan with butter and dust with flour. Tap off the excess.
3. Zest the 3 oranges. Rub it into the sugar and stir in the cinnamon.
4. Supreme 2 oranges as shown in the video. Cut the segments into half.
5. In a bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
6. Juice 1/2 an orange and mix it together with 1/2 cup yoghurt. In another bowl, whisk the 3 eggs together until pale and frothy.
7. In a large bowl, whisk together the sugar with all the wet ingredients: yoghurt and orange juice mix, the whisked eggs and the olive oil until they form a homogenous mixture.
8. Fold in the dry ingredients mix with a spatula, followed by the pieces of orange along with its juices.
9. Bake for 50-60 minutes until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
10. Serve with the blood orange compote and crème fraîche or whipped cream.

For the blood orange compote:
Supreme 3-4 blood oranges over a saucepan to catch the juices. Add 3 tablespoons of sugar (or to taste), 1/2 a vanilla bean, split and scraped. and let it simmer on a very low heat for 10-15 minutes until the segments fall apart. Begin with less sugar than you think because it’s going to thicken as it cooks.

*If you can’t find blood oranges, there’s no reason why you can’t make these with regular oranges. The name and look of these is just a wee bit more dramatic.