Whole Mandarin Cake with Poppy Seed Icing

Cakes are usually filled with lots of butter and eggs, but not these plant-based cakes. These are very different, made by Cherie. What are we making? This is my mum's whole orange cake recipe. My mum has been making this cake for such a long time, traditionally with a whole orange, but we're gonna swap it out and put some mandarins in there. And the smell is divine. When you are cooking this in your house, it's the time, you know how real estate agents say, oh, you should be baking bread when you're about to sell your house. I'd be baking this cake. Oh, I love it. I love it. And loads of coconut in it too, which any cake that has coconut in it, you have my attention. It gives it a bit of texture, but I'm a big fibre fan. I know it's not a popular term out there in the world, but it's really great. Plants are all made from fibre. The more fibre we can eat, the better we all are. And our microbiomes are super happy. You didn't expect that in a cake, did you? So coconut is just fantastic. It'll give it a little bit of texture, but obviously the flavour. So if we turn that into a flour by popping it in the food processor, it doesn't need to be super fine. It just needs to be finer than it is now. Okay, so I'll just pulse it a few times just to crumble it up a bit. Exactly. How's that looking? Nice. Because that's the texture that you're still gonna taste. You're still gonna be able to... Yeah, and if you want it finer, you just need to blend it a little longer. Yeah, exactly. But the important thing is that that goes in by itself dry. Then the rest of the cake all goes in. So the whole thing happens in the food processor. Another reason that I think learn this recipe off by heart because it is a good one. Okay, have you ever used coconut nectar before? I have once before. It's so delicious. It's got the same consistency as honey. So put all of that in. Oh, look at that. And then, yeah, I know it's really luscious, isn't it? It just makes you feel like this is gonna be an excellent cake. Olive oil. Now, if you don't like the flavor of olive oil, you can always sub that out with just a plain or vegetable oil, but I love olive oil. And I don't even bother trying to find one that's subtle in its flavor. I get full grassy olive oil and I stick that in my cakes. Okay, some apple cider vinegar. Now, this is our aspect that helps the cake to rise. So because we're not using eggs, you wanna have something that will aerate. And when you add apple cider vinegar and then we've got bicarb, you'll see it'll start to activate. And that's when you wanna get it straight into the oven. Don't let your cake batter sit around. Okay, vanilla. Let's do some of that. This is a vanilla paste. Again, it's indulgent because I love real vanilla. It's crazy to think about using real vanilla in everything, but if you're gonna have cake, why don't you eat cake every day? So I want it to be really special when I make it. So I think that's a really lovely addition to be able to have proper vanilla, but you can use vanilla extract if you want. And then we're gonna put our whole mandarins in. Skin, seeds, all of it. So I do give them a bit of a rough chop, but I don't worry about taking the seeds out. You don't take the skin off because that's where all of the essential oils are. All of that smell. It smells so good. Welcome to the real estate agent selling the house. This is the time. But that is the classic whole orange cake. And then it helps to bind everything together, give it beautiful moisture, and obviously that perfume. It's just incredible. Yep. Blitz those. Yep, and in the same way, we weren't bothered about the coconut having a little bit of texture. Don't stress if you've got little bits of mandarin peel in there. Personally, I think that's just the best part when you bite into this cake. So that's all of our liquids. Then we simply add the dry, and we're good to go. So bicarbon baking powder. I do both. Smell that. Homemade mixed spice. Amazing, right? I just am addicted to that. It just smells so good. And lucky that recipe's in your new cookbook. It is in my cookbook. Awesome. Fuel. Yeah, so that's got mace and black pepper and cinnamon and nutmeg and cloves in there. All that beautiful stuff. Spelt flour. Spelt flour? Tell me a little bit about spelt flour. Well, spelt is an ancient grain. Everybody has heard that term over and over. But it also, it's less refined. So we have more fiber in there. We have a lot more nutrients. It's far more nutrient dense. Even if you just swap for an unbleached spelt flour from your plain white flour, you're just gonna increase the goodness in there. And I think that that's an easy swap. So will my cake, so. And can you find spelt flour? Is it readily available? Health food stores? Yeah, more and more. I mean, you see it in supermarkets now. So it's becoming more and more mainstream. Worth hunting down. Yeah. All right, a little blend. Yes, please. Cherie, that's looking fantastic. When we went to shoot the book, we actually decided to mix things up a little bit and use these little baby bar, like a little baby loaf tin. These are so cute. They're gorgeous, aren't they? And Cherie, for this size cake, how long are we going to cook them for? Yeah, I'd go for 30 minutes. Make sure that you check cakes before the time says in a recipe because that gives you leeway, right? You can keep it going, but you can't reverse time. All right, we'll keep an eye on them and they'll go straight into the oven. Gorgeous. Buttercream icing is one thing. We're not doing that. But this is a beautifully creamy icing because it's made with cashews. So we still have that yummy consistency and that amazing mouthfeel. So pop those in the blender and you can pop a little bit of coconut nectar in there as well. Well, you can put all of it in there. This is cacao butter. Cacao butter is part of chocolate. That's the yummy fatty part of chocolate. And this will work better if I just shave this a little bit. It's really very soft. Cacao butter is, it's actually amazing for your skin. So if you have any left on the chopping board, you can do a little moment for your hands there. Yeah. So if that goes in and it's been shaved, it's just less work for the processor. Yep, absolutely. And we should mention the cashew nuts that we've used here are raw, untoasted. Oh yeah. Why can't we use the roasted version? Roasted is already too dry and crispy, right? So we want to have the moisture in there because this is an icing, so it needs to be really luscious and have that moisture. So pop the cacao butter in there and then we're going to do lemon juice. Okay. So do you want a squeezy squeezy? I do. And then... A whole lot? Yes, please. And then I'm just going to get a tablespoon of coconut oil and this is going to give it that sheen, that kind of glossy aspect that you would expect in a buttercream. Great. Pop that in and then simply some water so that that can start to blend together. So if you give that a blitz and we'll keep it going until it's nice and smooth. Okay. That looks good. Oh, wow. I've got to have a taste of this. Yeah, do it. Stick your finger in there. But you can use this straight away if you want to. So it's a little bit warm and it's a bit rummier. Or if you want to, just leave it on the bench, let it sit and then it'll firm up. You keep tasting it and when it gets to the consistency that you want, then you can pop it on your cakes. This is incredible and I love the hint of lemon in it. You can really taste it. So good. All right, we're going to let this sit here. I'm going to wait for our beautiful cakes to finish cooking, cool them, and we can ice them. Little cakes look fantastic. Awesome job there. And we managed to get eight out of them. So that's gorgeous. And we have allowed them to cool completely. Oh, they come out so easily. Look at you. Ah. Fresh. So the icing we let sit for a while so that everyone can see this difference in texture. It's starting to have that definite buttercream kind of look to it. Normally with an orange cake, or in this case, a mandarin cake, the poppy seeds are in the cake, but the poppy seeds are in the icing in this case. So add them at the end, because when we blitz this, you don't want to add your poppy seeds at that point, or you're just going to have kind of a gray-looking icing, which is not what you want. But to have these little speckles through the icing is really nice visually, but it's also really nice to crunch into. Now, you're a generous person with icing, surely. Sure am. Surely. So you're just doping it on. And then you can spread that out. You can kind of swirl it a little bit. Little dried orange moment. We always dehydrate oranges at our farm because they're just a great thing to have on hand. And how cute are these? Little flowers. Some little flowers as well. They look like a fancy Barossa Valley cafe. They are a fancy Barossa Cafe version of cake. Yeah, they look beautiful. That. Okay, this is my favorite part, the tasting part. Do you want to have a little slice off of that guy? Let's go straight down the middle. This one has the most icing. You've taken the orange as well. Oh, look at that. They're lovely, aren't they? They are just, that's a tender crumb right there. It's a tender crumb. It's that mixed spice through it. Yeah. It's just perfect. And you can taste the mandarin. Yep. So whether you use orange or mandarin, you're going to win because this is such a spectacular little cake. Oh, thank you. I told you, learn this one off by heart because you're just going to make it all the time. Done. That one is in the repertoire. Thank you. Pleasure.