DOUBLE ORANGE CAKE with MARBLED ICING...for me from him!

There is a small tradition we had started between the two of us. Some of you might already know about it. It's a simple one,we bake each other's birthday cakes. Last year it was Real Tiramisu and the year before that it was Finnegan's Chocolate Cream Cake.This year was no different and I LOVE the fact that it's no different when it comes to our little tradition :-) A week before May 31 he starts asking me what I want him to bake as my birthday cake and it's not that I haven't been thinking about it since May 4 but still, I tell him,'I'll think and tell you!'. I love the entire one week when he asks me again and again if I have decided what I wanted :-) I feel like a child all over again!

This time, I was a bit confused because I wanted something very simple, very home-y, very soft and something with fruits in it. So when he got back from work yesterday, I told him I wanted an orange cake with a simple icing. I used to call a frosting an icing before my blogging days began and never noticed that it changed along the way. Whenever I say icing, it has a very warm feeling...that's the word Amma uses whenever she iced a cake :-)

Last evening, I was sitting on the couch browsing through my favourite navy blue recipe diary and wondered if I ever had a storemade/bakery made cake for my birthday at home. I really couldn't recollect even a single birthday which had nothing but Amma baked cakes!

When I was small, she baked me all sorts of good looking cakes like Hickory Dickory Clock Cake, Castle Cake etc. Seriously, she had the patience to hunt for things in Kannur and bake it that many years ago! Even now, Kannur is not a place where you can find everything that you want, even if your wants and wishes are as simple as marshmallows!

DOUBLE ORANGE CAKE with MARBLED ICING
My own recipe

Ingredients:
Cake
100g flour
100g butter, softened
100g sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp orange zest
3 tbsp orange juice

Method: Pre-heat the oven to 350 F and line a 6 inch cake tin.
In a medium bowl, beat together flour,butter, sugar, eggs, baking powder & baking soda on high for 2 mins.Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add the zest and orange juice. Beat on high for another minute. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 30 mins. Let it cool in the tin for 10 mins . Unmould and cool completely over a cooling rack.

Marble Frosting
60g butter
1 1/4 c icing sugar
1 tbsp orange juice
1 tbsp orange zest
1 tbsp cocoa powder

Method: In a small bowl, beat butter and orange zest together until light and fluffy. Add orange juice and icing sugar little by little and beat till smooth. Divide the batter into 2 and whisk in cocoa powder to one half. Spoon out the icing alternately over the cake and marble it using a toothpick.

Our birthday routine is the same, always. We wake up early and go to church for mass . Once we are home I  make the breakfast and when we are done with it, we get ready to cut the cake :-) I couldn't help poking into this cake every now and then because it was so so soft and moist that I kept telling Jobin,'This cake is so soft!' and he always answered back,'Who baked it!' :-)

Trust me people, this is one really good cake! The icing is a perfect combination of chocolate and orange. This is not the kind of cakes you get in patisseries, it's the kind you get to eat only at home! It has such a comfort factor attached to it!I really don't know what's with me and citrus cakes! I LOVE them and maybe that's why I end up making my own proportions for them. The last time, it was my Lemon Yogurt Cake and this time it's a Double Orange Cake with Marble Frosting! :-)