Good Mood Food
Twice the yum for your tum with my Greek Portokalopita (aka the JUICIEST orange cake) and my Malt, Milk Chocolate & Butterscotch Cake. Unbuckle those belts, it's time to FEAST.
Hi friends!
I hope you are all well this week – apologies for running a little late on the newsletter but I don’t quite know where time has gone this past week. How are we pretty much in March? How is it basically Spring?? How are we nearing halfway through the year? HOW IS IT CHRISTMAS ALREADY?!
Spiral over. I’ll get my sh*t together for the rest of the newsletter, I promise.
BECAUSE it is already 5.55 pm and I’m behind on the usual 5.30 pm posting, we are bypassing the intro for today because A) time is of the essence and B) I am trying desperately not to bore you all with another mammoth newsletter (I know last week was LONG AS HELL).
That being said, we have the usual amount of deliciousness for you all, including a real filthy main bake treat.
DON’T FORGET: next week we have the FREE newsletter edition, meaning ALL the recipes are available to everyone so I’m very much looking forward into tucking into that one very soon.
But for now, less yap and more yum.
Whilst the weather has been totally misery guts this week in London (misery for some, yay for me as I love the sound of the rain of heavy rain against the windows PLUS any excuse to stay indoors and activate hermit mode is a win in my eyes), I wanted to share some recipes that will bring a bit of unbridled joy to you all.
We have the standard weekly update from the ‘Around the World’ series. This week I moved onto number 48 (why does it now feel like I am suddenly hurtling through the list at some speed??) and visited Greece – one of my favourite countries to go visit. I’ve been a few times and gone somewhere different each time (Mykonos, Santorini, Ios, Athens & Porto Heli) and have fallen in deep, deep, DEEEEP love with the food each time. Bougatsa and Loukoumades (washed down with an ice-cold Mythos) remain my fave things to drown in each time I am there and whilst that is all well and good, I am FUMING with past Rubes that she never tried the latest bake from ‘Around the World’.
This week I was introduced to a Greek classic, a Portokalopita – also known as an Orange Cake. Phenomenally juicy and sweet, this cake was a total hoot to make as it was so easy. The actual hands-on time was super minimal, and the actual outcome was sublime. The perfectly bright and sunny anecdote to the incessant rain this week.
Following on from that slice of nice, we head over to the main bake of the week which is my Malt, Milk Chocolate and Butterscotch Cake. Yes, it sounds beige as hell but my word, it is deliciously indulgent and just as luxuriously velvet as it all sounds. I wanted the two bakes this week to share a commonality whilst also being wildly different, so we are using oranges like the Greek Cake to add a bit of zest and oomph to an otherwise decadently rich treat.
If you like malteasers, then you are going to love this cake. It has all the hallmarks of a crowd pleasing bake – chocolate? Tick. Fluffy, moist sponge? Tick. Saucy sauciness to bring it all together? Tick. A bit of zestiness to cut through the sweetness? Tick, tick, tickety tick.
I’m now drooling.
Are you drooling? You should be.
I’m gonna go cut myself another slice. Bye x
First up this week is the latest sweet installment in my ‘Around the World’ series, a classic Greek Orange Cake. It’s made up of a sweet, syrup-soaked sponge made with no flour...just filo. Yes, that blew my mind too. Unsure what sort of sorcery the Greeks are up to over there, but this cake is nothing short of magic. It's the perfect beginner bake as no stand mixer or electric hand whisk is needed - just a blender, your hands, an oven, and an empty tum ready for a whole lotta yum.
There are only two things in life that can leave me speechless:
Seeing James dance (he can barely two step) and,
Good cake.
This cake doesn't fit into the latter because good would be doing it no justice. It's bright, zesty, punchy, JUICYYY, smushy, squidgy and utterly delightful. If you love cakes like Lemon Drizzle or anything citrussy, you will ADORE this one.
I used Akis Petretzikis recipe as a base - which is very good - but altered a few quants to suit the tin I was using, reduced the shugs in the recipe (‘cause there is A LOT) and added a bit of jazz with the orange slices on top. He has a recipe video if you are after a more guided step by step, or you can take a watch of Georgina Hayden and her Yiayia, both over on YouTube.
I was completely taken aback by how good this one tasted. I have SO many questions, and Greece, I want answers to the following:
How did the filo make the perfect, spongiest, syrup-soaked base? Think Tres Leches style soaked – it was drenched all the way through and yet held it’s shit together better than I could ever dream. I am now thinking of more filo-based desserts to make immediately because why flour when you can filo??
There’s a tonne of sugar in this cake but then you add the ice cream (which again has more sugar in it) and it somehow balances out perfectly?? The maths ain’t mathing people.
It is absurdly easy to make. Is this sort of deliciousness allowed with such easy access? Who granted permission for this?
Will you hate me if instantly remake but use lemons instead? I am thinking lemons will just tip me over the edge with it all.
If the above is akin to blasphemy, I am then going to just smother it in last weeks Pistachio and Basil sugar because I KNOW that combo is gonna hit on levels unknown. But I love you, Greece. Always and forevs x
Enough blab, let’s get to it but before we do, make sure you check out Rubes Recommends for tips and tricks to help you nail this bake.
Recipe Makes: 1 x 20 by 30 cm / 8 by 12 inch deep tin
Recipe Serves: 12…comfortably.
Y O U – W I L L – N E E D –
Syrup
560 g Caster Sugar
400 g Water
240 g Orange Juice (I used fresh but carton will also work)
Base
450 g Filo, sheets
3 Large Oranges, whole
3 Large Oranges, zest only
250 g Caster Sugar
250 g Vegetable Oil
250 ml Whole Milk
3 Large Eggs
1 tsp Baking Powder, sifted
1 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda, sifted
2 tsp Vanilla Bean Paste or 1 tsp Vanilla Powder
Handful of Demerara Sugar
To Serve
Vanilla Ice Cream
Fresh Mint Leaves, finely chopped
M E T H O D –
Starting with the syrup, add all the ingredients to a saucepan and place over a medium heat. Bring to a gentle boil before removing and leaving to cool.
Preheat your oven to 100C/210F/Gas Mark ¼ and grease and line a 20 by 30 cm / 8 inch by 12 inch deep baking tin.
Gently unwrap your filo and crinkle them one by one, like an accordian – so fold over an inch, flip the filo over, fold over by another inch and so forth. Repeat the process for all the filo sheets before placing them onto a baking tray, with the folded edges facing up.
Pop into the oven and bake for 70 to 75 minutes until crisp and dry. Once baked, remove from the oven and increase the temperature to 160C/320F/Gas Mark 3.
In the meantime, add 2 large oranges to a saucepan, fill with water, place the lid on top and pop it over a medium heat. Boil the oranges for 1 hour.
After an hour, remove from the water and leave to one side until they are cool to touch. Don’t be a muppet like me and think you can squeeze them hot, that juice is like LAVA trust me.
Once they are cool, slice in half and squeeze out the juice. Add the pulp and skin, along with the caster sugar to a blender and blitz until smooth. NOTE: Mine took about 3 to 4 minutes to break down the skin.
Once smooth, add the oil, milk, eggs, baking powder, bicarb, vanilla and orange zest. Mix again on high to blend until smooth and everything has emulsified. Pour the mix into a large bowl.
Grab the crisp filo and use your hands to crumble. You want the filo to be broken down into small pieces – be careful, the shards can be quite sharp!
Add the crushed filo in thirds to the wet mix. Use a rubber spatula to mix well.
Once all the filo has been added, pour the mix into your lined tin. Use the back of a spoon to level out.
Thinly slice the remaining orange and place on top of the mix (this is optional but aesthetics ya know), sprinkle the demerara on top of the orange slices and bake for 48 to 50 minutes.
Remove the tin from the oven and use a ladle to immediately pour over the cooled syrup. Allow the syrup to be completely absorbed. NOTE: This will take approx. 1 hour but I left mine overnight for better flavour.
Slice and serve alongside a scoop of vanilla ice-cream, a sprinkling of finely chopped mint and a drizzle of any leftover syrup.
Finally, we move onto the main bake of the week. This cake, like most of the bakes I do for the newsletter, came to me as a delicious brainwave.
It all started off from the Greek Portokalopita – the JOOOOCIEST of cakes. As much as I enjoyed demolishing that cake off slice by slice (I still have a few left over in the fridge and honestly cannot wait for the ultimate Friday night slob fest where I eat them all and then cry from being too full), I wanted the main bake to be it’s younger, bougie relative. The relative that you know you are related to but you also question how??
This cake is very much that relative. That sophisticated, got their shit together, classy, rich AF relative.
My Malt, Milk Chocolate & Butterscotch Cake might not be as juicy, but she is every bit just as delicious. We are taking the orange from the Portokalopita and using the zest to spike a luxuriously decadent butterscotch sauce which sits between layers of malted milk-soaked malt sponge (quite the mouthful) and smothered in velvety smooth milk chocolate whipped mascarpone.
I wanted something decadently moreish without being too sickly. I wanted something that tasted extravagant without being too tricky. And I wanted something that made oranges sing, just like they do in the Portokalopita. And that, my friends, is how we got to here.
That sweet, toasty, mildly nutty malt sponge soaked in the malt milk is heaven. As we are boiling the milk, it turns the malt drink from mild to heavenly caramelly (it’s a word okay?) and honestly – bathe me in it. This cake works well as a easy to put together 2 sponge stacker but would equally work as a slab cake, tray bake, cupcake, muffins…the works.
This, folks, is the slice of nice you deserve.
Recipe Makes: 2 x 18 cm / 7 inch tins
Recipe Serves: 8
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