Our Maker's Acres Family Farm: Tangerines

This is citrus time in South Louisiana. It seems that everywhere you look there are citrus absolutely loaded up on every tree - satsumas, grapefruit, navel oranges, kumquats, and tangerines. We always have a bowl full of citrus on the counter for snacking and we also keep some in our fridge so it is ice cold.

We were looking for a recipe that we could use some of our citrus and we found an interesting one at leitesculinaria.com - Satsuma Orange Cake. You can check it out here. In this instance we substituted tangerines for satsumas since that is what we had just picked off of our trees.

For the glazed oranges that will provide the topping for our cake, it calls for 6 or 7 tangerines, the juice of a lemon, 1 cup sugar and 1/4 teaspoon salt.

Ingredients for the glazed tangerine topping

For the cake itself, you'll need:

1 stick of butter at room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs
2/3 cups flour
1/3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Ingredients for the cake

Grate the zest of one of the tangerines. This will go into the batter.

Zesting the tangerine off of one of our trees

Then cut the fruit in half and juice it. This should yield 1/3 cup juice.

Juicing

Slice the remaining fruit into very thin rounds, about 1/4 inch thick maximum, removing seeds. Microwave them for 2 minutes to soften the skins somewhat as you'll be eating them in the cake, skins and all.

Slicing the tangerines

Juice the lemon.

Mix the orange juice, lemon juice, sugar, salt, and all your lemon slices in a pan over low heat and simmer. Cook for 6 to 7 minutes. You want the skins to be tender. Once they are very tender, remove the slices with a slotted spoon and place on a plate, but continue cooking the syrup down until it has been reduced to 1/2 cup liquid. This will take about 15 minutes. Once done set it aside.

Simmering slices in syrup

Removing tangerine rounds

Preheat your oven to 375 F and while it is warming up, butter a 9 inch springform cake pan. Mix the butter and sugar with a mixer, then add one egg, then the next and finally the tangerine zest. Mix up real good

Mixing it up

Now in a bowl mix flour, baking powder, and salt. Add this mixture, slowly, to the batter and mix until combined. Pour this all into the springform pan and arrange the orange slices in one layer on top of the batter, reserving the remaining glaze.

Ready for the oven

Now you bake the cake for 15 minutes. Reduce the oven temp to 350 degrees F and bake for 40 more minutes. You'll know it is done when it has a nice golden brown color. Allow the cake to cool on a cooling rack. Use a wooden skewer to poke a bunch of holes all over the cake. Pour and brush the glaze over the top of the cake. Some of the glaze will sink into the holes you punched.