Sicilian Whole Orange Cake

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{For Aditi}
This is a post about a cake that came from what was around, and what was around was an orange.

Years ago, when I had to look down rather than up to find my children’s faces, we used to read a picture book called The Perfect Orange. The story is Ethiopian. It tells of a girl who travels long ways to present the Great Negus with a single, perfect orange. On her way, she encounters a Hyena who mocks her mission with his high-pitched, reverberating laugh. For what would the Great Negus want such an insignificant gift? Pointless, child, turn back. But the girl seeks nothing more than to convey perfection to the Negus, so she continues on her way.

The girl is received with all the graciousness of the Negus’ court, and when she journeys home it is on a mule with with gold-filled saddlebags she doesn’t know are there. But the Hyena notices, agape. And he makes his own calculations now, following to the Negus’ court with gifts of land and property–gifts of far more consequence than a lone orange.

The Negus receives him with equal graciousness, and meets the Hyena’s generosity in equal measure by returning to him what is now undeniably the kingdom’s most prized possession: a single, perfect orange.

So we learned, at our bedtimes, that an orange is not just an orange, but the equivalence of all the landscapes within. And if it were the only thing around, then that was the vast promise of its perfection.

Then we found that the Sicilians had come to this realization, too, perhaps hundreds of years prior, in the midst of all those dreamy Mediterranean orange groves.

And we made our perfect orange a cake.

The recipe calls for a whole orange, so you want to use an organic one if you can–or soak and scrub your orange really well. You won’t taste or mind the slight orange bitterness, believe me. Do remove the seeds though, and when you blend, don’t make a mash out of the puree, but have it look slightly coarse, as below:

Remember not to overmix your batter, too, and to wait until the cake top is a beautiful orange-gold-brown to go in with a tester and make sure the insides are done.

We topped our cake with a fennel brittle, but it wasn’t a super-hit so I’ve left it out of this recipe. If you’re inclined to try something similar though, you might want to toast 1 tablespoon of fennel seeds with an equivalent amount of sugar until the sugar melts and coats the fennel. Crush lightly, add some chopped pistachios, and a bit of orange zest–to sprinkle over your finished and dressed cake. Or, just chop up some candied orange peel and use that tossed with pistachios instead.

The boy I have to crane my neck to see preferred the cake with just a dusting of powdered sugar. So you see in the pictures that I’ve done my slices both ways, for all tastes. Perfect, any way you please.