Orange And Pistachio Cake [Egg-less]

Hello there! :) I am back from yet another hiatus! :) Hoping the momentum continues for a while! 

I have been away from my little bloggie world for a while now and it feels like forever! It was just another phase where I just couldn't get myself to sit and create a post. I have been cooking, baking and clicking pics. And have quite a few drafts too, but the part of drafting out the post and publishing it... well, that didn't happen for some reason. Just another blog-slump phase. But, now that am back, I hope to be around :)

So, a few weeks back I had to... HAD to make an orange cake and I had to.. HAD to use damerara (brown) sugar in it. 

Hmmm...why you ask? Oh well, because my craving said so! Ah, for those of you who haven't met my ever so weird and impromptu craving... here are some of the dishes that my craving and me came up with: Spinach and Mushroom Pasta, Soya Potato Patties, Eggless Chocolate Walnut Cake!

Yup, we make a great pair, my craving and me!! :P

This was the first time I used brown sugar and I was pretty satisfied with the outcome. The taste and smell of this sugar is different from the regular white refined sugar. But the interesting texture it gave to the cake, I simply loved! I am definitely experimenting more with brown sugar cakes... for now, enjoy this simple, flavourful orange pistachio cake :)

Ingredients

All purpose flour (Maida) - 1 ½ cup

Orange – 1

·        Zest of 1 orange.

·        Few tsp of orange juice

Curd - 1 cup

Damerara Sugar | Brown Sugar - ¾ cup [You can replace this with the same quantity of regular refined white sugar, if you do not like brown sugar]

Baking powder - 1 ¼ tsp

Baking soda - ½ tsp

Oil - ½ cup

Vanilla Essence - ½ tsp

Sliced/Chopped Pistachio - ½ cup

Icing Sugar - 2 tsp

Method

• Pre-heat the oven at 180 deg for ten minutes.
• Combine together sugar and orange zest.
• In a large mixing bowl, beat together the curd and sugar-orange zest mixture until the sugar dissolves in the curd.
• Add baking soda and baking powder and mix well. Set aside for a few minutes till small bubbles start to appear on top.
• Add in the vanilla essence and oil. Mix again.
• Slowly add in the flour into the wet mixture little by little and fold in the batter to combine the dry and wet ingredients.
• Continue doing this until you have tossed in all the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and formed a creamy batter.
• Toss in some chopped pistachio and fold into the batter.
• Line a cake pan and pour in the batter into the pan until just over 1/2 the capacity.
• Empty contents into a greased baking tray.
• Sprinkle pistachio slivers/flakes on top.
• Bake at 170 deg. for 20 mins or until a toothpick comes out clean from the center of the cake.
• Take the cake out of the pan and cool it on a wire rack.

For the glaze: Combine together the orange juice and icing sugar and pour over the cake, once it has cooled down a little.