Today’s the last day of quiet before the storm, mum and dad are flying in tomorrow to spend their first ever English Christmas with us.

I was flipping through the GF recipes looking for something I could do with oranges, some kind of nice dessert to give my Master Baking mum after dinner. Found this, done it, enjoyed doing it.

While the oven was warming up to 180 C, I grated orange peel out of 2 oranges, then peeled whatever scum was left and sliced them thickly. I layered them on the bottom of the tin, ready with generous amount of golden syrup. Kitchen Aid in the meantime was busy mixing 100 g of butter, same amount of self raising flour and brown sugar, 50 g of ground almonds, 2 eggs, half a tsp of baking powder,  the orange peel mentioned and roughly chopped 2 clementines. All that went on top of the oranges and baked for about 40 minutes.

I served it with whipped cream spiked with a bit of Cointreau.

Florek says it could have done with better quality oranges, he found it a touch too sour and even bitter at times, I’d say it’s a good, moist pud. As for the upside down cakes, nothing beats the pineapple.

Raymond Blanc winter menu features one of those. But as I’m broke and squeaking and I can’t really go to the Brasserie and give it a taste, I made my own. I soaked the raisins in Baccardi, some dark rum would have been better, but then again, not sure if Izzie would approve me feeding her  strong, dark rum through the umbilical cord, doubt it.

I used the usual recipe, 300 ml of double cream, 75 ml of milk, a bit less than 100 g sugar, 1,5 gelatine leaves. Just to make sure the flavour is there, I added about 6 tsps of the rum from the raisins. Ended up with a very pleasant, quite light dessert, the rum not too strong, raisins nice and soft, simple strawberry compote on top. 4 more small ones in the fridge.