Orange Cake

Orange Cake

This is an adaptation for a recipe for orange bread. It turned out so much like a cake, I decided to keep it. I actually made it using mandarins. This was very delicious.

Wet Ingredients:
1 cup oil or butter (I used coconut oil)
1 cup sugar
4 eggs
3/4 cups sour cream
Juice from 4 large oranges or 8 mandarins
Zest from the same oranges or mandarins
1 tsp vanilla

Dry Ingredients:
3 cups flour (or more)
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
Dash of nutmeg

Optional Glaze Ingredients:
1 cup confectioners (powdered) sugar
1 8-oz package cream cheese
1 can coconut milk (cream portion and enough liquid to get the consistency of what you want)
Splash of vanilla
Dash of cardamom

Directions:
1) In large bowl, beat eggs until fully mixed.
2) Add oil to eggs and beat until fluffy again.
3) Add sugar and beat once again.
4) Mix in the remaining wet ingredients.
5) In a medium bowl, sift all the dry ingredients.
6) Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix thoroughly. If you see it is too runny, add  more flour.
7) Pour batter into greased cake pans or a bundt pan.
8) Bake in a pre-heated 350 degree oven 45 minutes for cake pans and 1 hour 10 minutes in a bundt pan or until it tests done with a toothpick.
9) Let cool briefly before trying to remove from pan.
10) Top with your favorite glaze.

Directions for Glaze:
1) Beat sugar, cream cheese, the cream portion of the coconut milk, vanilla, and cardamom together in small bowl until blended.
2) Add enough of the remaining coconut milk liquid until you get your desired consistency.
3) For best results, we discovered that this glaze fluffs up a little if refrigerated overnight.

Pumpkin Sugar Cookies

Pumpkin Sugar Cookies (AKA: Crack Pumpkin Cookies)

So, my wife and everyone at her work really love these cookies. She calls them "Crack Pumpkin Cookies" because no matter how hard you try, you always eat a ton of them. They are so addictive! The recipe calls for oil only, but they can come out a little flat if you don't regularly chill the cookies during preparation time. I have debated using half butter and half coconut oil to prevent so much melting, but that might change the flavor too much.


Dry Ingredients:
6 c flour
2 t baking powder
1 t salt
1/2 t cinnamon
1/4 t nutmeg
Dash of cloves powder

Wet Ingredients:
2 c cane sugar
2 c room temp coconut oil (not the icky flavorless stuff, use the real stuff)
2 eggs
2 c raw pumpkin purée peeled
1/2 t vanilla extract

Other Ingredients:
More sugar for dipping
water for dipping





 Directions:


1) Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl and set aside.
2) In a very large bowl, mix eggs until smooth.
3) Add coconut oil to eggs and beat until fluffy and smooth.
4) Add other wet ingredients into egg and oil mixture and beat until fluffy.
5) Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients. Mix until incorporated. The mixture will be sticky.
6) Refrigerate for 30 minutes to an hour.
7) Dip a dinner spoon and your hands in water (wet not soaking). Use the spoon to scoop out a small ball and roll it gently in your hands to form a mediocre ball. Roll the ball in sugar and place on a greased cookie sheet. Due to the nature of coconut oil, they might melt and spread on the pan. Space them accordingly.
8) Freeze the prepared balls uncovered for about 15 minutes.
9) Bake the frozen balls in a preheated oven 350 degrees for 15 minutes, rotating once at half time.

Yield:
A heap of cookies! I think I ended up with about 8 dozen. It depends on how big you make the cookies.