Spiced Orange and Chia Seed Cake with Coffee Ice Cream

Makes: 12 portions
Preparation & cooking time: 3 – 3 1/2 hours (including freezing time for the ice cream) 

Hi guys! This post is my entry for PETA’s Great Vegan Bake-Off 2014. I only found out about the competition a few days back and I immediately thought that I had to enter for two reasons. Firstly, I think that PETA is an amazing organisation that has done a brilliant job of educating numerous amounts of people on the important issue of the treatment of animals within our society and I am sure their efforts will be seen even more in the future and secondly, it has given me a chance to practice my vegan baking! Since becoming vegan, baking really hasn’t been my strong point, however, I hope that you like my entry, a spiced orange and chia seed cake with a coffee ice cream! I decided to go for this combination as I love the partnership of orange with powerful spices as I think they really compliment each other and I had to follow one of the main elements of my blog by adding a coffee ice cream with it. For those of you who haven’t had the combination of orange and coffee before, you should definitely give it a go as they really do go well together! If anyone enjoys vegan baking then click on the link above and enter a recipe, it is great fun and for a great cause. I hope you like the recipe!

Ingredients:

• 4 Oranges
• 300g ground almonds
• 300g light brown soft sugar
• 1 heaped teaspoon chia seeds
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon mixed spice
• 1/2 teaspoons nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• Orgran No Egg (a natural egg replacer), (7 teaspoons egg replacer to 14 tablespoons of water)
• Dairy free chocolate (for decoration)
• 2 Frozen bananas (peel and slice the bananas before freezing)
• 2 shots of the best quality espresso you can get/make

Method:

1.   Place 3 of the oranges into a large deep pan and cover them with cold water. Bring the water to a boil, then place a lid over the pan, turn the heat down and leave the oranges to simmer for 2 hours. To check if the oranges are finished, slide a knife into the skin of the orange and if it goes in really easily and the inside of the orange has broken down then they are definitely done. Once the oranges reach this stage drain and leave them to cool in a colander.

2.   Whilst the oranges are cooling, you can prepare the ice cream. This is such a simple way of making really tasty (and healthy!) ice cream and it can be made into whatever flavour you fancy! Put the frozen banana slices and the 2 shots of espresso into a food blender and blend until you have a really silky smooth mixture. You can add whatever flavour you like to the banana base; I really like adding frozen berries to the mixture. Once the ice cream is silky smooth, pour it into a container, cover it with a lid (or cling film) and put it into the freezer. Simple!

3.   Once the oranges have cooled, slice each of them in half and remove any seeds. Roughly chop the oranges (skin an all!) and place them into a food processor and blitz until you have a smooth orange mixture. Preheat the oven to 160 C, then line an 8 inch (20cm) cake tin with grease proof paper and then grease with vegetable oil just to be sure that your cake will not stick to the tin.

4.   Put the orange mixture into a bowl and then place 450g of the mixture back into the food processor (you can then discard the rest, or keep it for another recipe) along with all of the dry ingredients (except for the chia seeds) and the 14 tablespoons of water and blend until you have a nice smooth batter. Once the mixture is smooth, mix in the chia seeds with a spoon. Pour the mixture into the prepared cake tin and put into the oven for 1 hour – 1 1/2 hours. Check the cake every now and then to make sure that it isn’t burning. If you feel the cake is colouring too quickly on the top, cover the tin with tin foil for the remainder of the baking time. To check if the cake is done, pierce the cake with a skewer and if the skewer comes out clean (without and cake mixture on it) then the cake is done. Keep the cake in the oven until it has reached the point where the skewer comes out clean. Once the cake is cooked, place the tin on a wire rack and once the cake has cooled completely, remove the cake from the tin.

5.   Now you are ready to plate up! Take a generous slice of cake and place it in the middle of the plate, then put a nice spoonful of the ice cream on the top of the cake and top this with the zest of the remaining orange and some chocolate shavings!

I really hope that you like this recipe and give it a go! 🙂