Spiced pumpkin, olive oil and orange cake recipe
This is a cake you can turn to when you need to lift your mood as, while it bakes, it fills the kitchen with the uplifting scent of sweet pumpkin married with the warming fragrances of cinnamon, ginger and cloves. It is a dense and supremely moist cake, using olive oil instead of butter for a wonderfully soft, tender crumb.
This recipe uses canned pumpkin but, if you want to make pumpkin purée yourself, roast around 400g (14oz) peeled, deseeded and chopped pumpkin for about 30 minutes or until completely soft. After it has cooled, push it through a sieve to get rid of excess liquid. The cake keeps well in an airtight container for a couple of days.
You’ll need a 25x13cm/10x5inch (900g/32oz) loaf tin.
Recipe from Zaitoun: Recipes and Stories from the Palestinian Kitchen by Yasmin Khan. Published by Bloomsbury on 12 July 2018, RRP £26.
Ingredients
For the icing- 250 g icing sugar
- 0.5 organic or unwaxed orange (finely grated zest)
- 2 tbsp orange juice
- 1 tsp lemon juice
- 1 handful unsalted pistachio nibs, to serve
- 200 g caster sugar
- 50 ml extra virgin olive oil
- 0.5 organic or unwaxed orange (finely grated zest)
- 3 eggs
- 200 g plain flour
- 1.5 tsp baking powder
- 0.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 0.5 tsp ground cinnamon
- 0.5 tsp ground allspice
- 0.5 tsp ground ginger
- 1 pinch gound cloves
- 0.2 tsp sea salt
- 250 g cooked pumpkin purée, canned or home-made (see recipe introduction)
- 1 tsp lemon juice
- 150 ml light olive oil, plus more for the tin
Details
- Cuisine: Palestinian
- Recipe Type: Cake
- Difficulty: Easy
- Preparation Time: 25 mins
- Cooking Time: 50 mins
- Serves: 8
Step-by-step
- Preheat the oven to 180°C/360°F/gas mark 4. Lightly oil a 25x13cm/10x5inch (900g/32oz) loaf tin and line it with baking parchment.
- With electric beaters, beat the sugar, both oils and the orange zest until combined and smooth. Gradually beat in the eggs, one by one, until the batter turns paler.
- Sift all the dry ingredients and gently stir them in.
- Finally, fold in the pumpkin purée and lemon juice, being careful not to lose too much air from the mixture.
- Pour the batter into the prepared tin and bake in the centre of the oven for around 50 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean. Remove from the oven, leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then tip it out on to a wire rack.
- When the cake is completely cool, make the icing. Mix the icing sugar with the orange zest, 2 tablespoons of orange juice and the lemon juice until you have a thick paste. If you need to loosen it a bit, add 1 teaspoon more orange juice at a time; you want a thick paste, so don’t make it too runny.
- Spoon the icing over the cake and finish with a sprinkling of pistachio nibs.
This recipe is from Zaitoun: Recipes and Stories from the Palestinian Kitchen by Yasmin Khan. Published by Bloomsbury on 12 July 2018, RRP £26. Photography by Matt Russell.
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