Small Win #17: Promise me you'll do this with blood oranges?

An exclusive recipe from SWEET + the salted caramel effect

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PSA: blood orange season is short but very sweet… don’t let it pass you by!

My favourite thing to do with a blood orange is to make a Garibaldi cocktail (1 part Campari, 2 parts fresh blood orange juice, stirred and served over ice) — you can thank me later.

My second favourite thing? This easy 1-bowl, 1-whisk cake from my new cookbook.

In truth, this cake is very flexible — you could use any citrus, you could swap the Greek yoghurt with sour cream or creme fraiche, you could swap the olive oil with a neutral oil… But this particular combination of seasonal blood oranges, tangy Greek yoghurt and grassy olive oil pleases me the most, which is why I’m sharing it with you today.

I hope this cake brings some brightness to this cold, dull winter we’re having!

Love,
Alexina

Coming up on Small Wins — The forgotten pancake. The easiest + quickest ‘bread’ in the world. The best cake to make with kids (no scales!). The single, most essential technique for roasting a chicken.

For my Small Wins+ community — This month’s 101 was about cooking for the one that you love — something that I hope will serve you well for future date nights. Looking ahead to March, we’ll be delving into one of my favourite topics: pancakes! And if you’re thinking next month is a bit late to be talking pancakes, well, Pancake Day is weirdly in March this year. In next month’s 101 we’ll cover the secret ingredient for the best crepes, pancakes for the lazy person (I promise there is no need for a packet mix), the cutest pancakes in the world and much more. Become a paid subscriber to gain access.

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THE SALTED CARAMEL EFFECT

Photo copyright Yuki Sugiura

Early in my cooking journey, by the side of Miss P — my former boss from my fishmongering days and the best home cook I know! — I learnt about Thai cuisine. And it was whilst making tom yum gai that Miss P explained to me the concept of rot chad, “the right taste”.

One of the central tenets of Thai cuisine is that there must be a balance between hot, sour, salty and sweet, often achieved through the foundational ingredients of chilli, fresh lime, fish sauce and palm sugar.

Rot chad is a concept that sometimes applies at the level of an individual dish, and at other times applies at the level of a meal (giving space for some dishes to major in one or two of those flavour profiles). The point, however, is that the elements are always present and there’s a focus on finding the right balance between them.

I was a novice cook when I first learnt about rot chad but I latched onto it immediately: here was a framework for flavour that I could use to help me to become a better cook!

Instead of focusing on hot, sour, salty and sweet, however, I zoomed in on the five tastes: bitter, sour, salty, sweet and umami. From that day forward, part of the way that I thought about food was as a balancing act between these five elements which, in the right proportions, could result in something that was out-of-this-world-delicious.

I walked around with this framework in my head for many years, but as I’ve actively researched flavour for my cookbooks I’ve since discovered that the science backs me up: enter the ‘salted caramel effect’.

Salted caramel took the food world by storm back in the noughties not just because it was something new, but because it was something powerful: a food that could hit all five taste notes in one single spoonful.

And in spite of the opinion pieces now lamenting the neverending dominance of salted caramel, the truth is that it’s hard to tire of the stuff.

Researchers from the University of Florida coined the term ‘hedonistic escalation’ to describe the inability to stop indulging in something. As they explain, hedonistic escalation is more likely to occur “when a palatable food consists of a complex combination of flavours” since “a person is [then] motivated to taste additional flavours on each successive bite.”¹ In other words, when a food has layers of flavour, it never gets boring.

Salted caramel certainly fits that bill. Think about it: the only thing that stops me from continuing to eat salted caramel is the sense that I might make myself sick — but that’s a sensation that comes way before I lose interest in the flavour.

Now, granted, it doesn’t feel brand new to suggest that you might consider incorporating salty, or bitter, or sour, or umami elements into your desserts — we’ve seen miso used in cookies, feta used in cheesecakes and extra virgin olive oil poured over chocolate mousse. Still, in my experience this is currently happening more in restaurants than in the typical home kitchen: the message is still percolating.

When I develop recipes I’m often considering whether I can push the flavours in deeper, more interesting directions (caveat: this should not always be the aim — mild can be good too), and the feedback I still get a lot is ‘this is one of the best desserts I’ve ever tasted’. I don’t say this to brag but to make the point that any keen baker or cook can benefit from leaning into this thinking more intentionally.

After all, it is no coincidence that many of the most popular desserts feature chocolate, coffee or lemon: here are three strong flavours that represent a forceful antidote to sweetness.

Unlocking knockout desserts is about finding the sweet spot between harmony (comfort) and contrast (interest), and considering the five tastes is one way to approach that challenge.

Sugar, by default, is familiar — it almost universally represents celebration and comfort — so when you layer over contrast in the form of bitterness, sourness, salt or umami, you quickly head towards delicious.

The next time you’re putting together a dessert I invite you to consider which elements are offering some contrast in flavour…

Is it sour blackcurrants?

Tart raspberries?

Bitter dark chocolate?

Umami-rich miso?

Nutty, savoury sesame seeds?

Bitter-edged booze?

I promise you, it’s these elements which will have people going back for seconds.

Try it for yourself

Here’s a little experiment that I did with the Marks & Spencers Product Development team whilst presenting to them on flavour, and it’s one that you can easily replicate at home.

Make the Sticky Toffee Pudding recipe from my first cookboook Bitter but instead of making one big batch of toffee sauce, make two half-quantities: one where you go ahead and include the stout, the other where you leave it out.

Do a taste taste with your friends and family to see which sticky toffee pudding each person prefers — the one with the stout sauce or the one with the classic sauce. You’ll be amazed at how such a small quantity of one ingredient can transform the experience of eating the dish!

Photo copyright to Yuki Sugiura

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SIMPLE CITRUS, OLIVE OIL + VANILLA LOAF CAKE

Adapted from my cookbook Sweet

A super easy one-bowl cake that’ll bring colour and zing to these winter days. Blood oranges (you could use grapefruit) and lemon bring acidity, Greek yoghurt offers tang and olive oil contributes a subtle grassy bitterness.

Ingredients

For the cake:

• 2 blood oranges, plus the juice of 1/2 blood orange (about 20–30ml/3/4–1fl oz/11/2–2 tablespoons)

• 2 medium eggs

• 110ml (31/2fl oz/scant 1/2 cup) olive oil

• 80g (3oz/1/3 cup) Greek yoghurt, plus extra to serve

• 140g (43/4oz/2/3 cup) caster (superfine) or granulated sugar

• Juice of 1/2 lemon

• 1 tsp vanilla bean paste

• ¼ tsp fine sea salt

• 100g (31/2oz/generous 3/4 cup) plain (all-purpose) flour

• 3/4 tsp baking powder

• ¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)

For the syrup:

• 80ml (21/2fl oz/1/3 cup) fresh blood orange juice (approx. 2 blood oranges)

• 20ml fresh lemon juice

• 100g (4oz/scant1/2 cup) caster (superfine) or granulated sugar

• 1/4 tsp vanilla bean paste

Equipment

• 1 x 2lb loaf tin, lined (these loaf tin liners are a game-changer)

Method

For the cake:

1. Preheat the oven to 160°C fan/180°C/350°F/gas 4.

2. Zest the two oranges into a medium to large bowl and set aside.

3. Top and tail the oranges, removing the skin and pith by running a knife down the sides (see video below). Slice the oranges crossways into 5mm (¼in) rounds, picking out and discarding the pips.

4. Arrange the orange slices in the bottom of the loaf tin in a single layer (you may not need all the slices — eat the rest or save them to serve with the cake).

5. Returning to the bowl, add the eggs, olive oil, yoghurt, sugar, orange juice, lemon juice, vanilla and salt, then whisk together until combined.

6. Sift over the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda then whisk until combined.

7. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf tin and bake until a skewer comes out clean, around 45 minutes. (This is a good time to make the syrup — see instructions below).

8. Once out of the oven, allow the cake to cool for 5–10 minutes before turning it out onto a wire rack (so that the oranges are visible) and allowing it to cool further.

9. When the cake and syrup are warm but no longer hot, brush the syrup over the cake, particularly focusing on the oranges. Serve slices with a dollop of Greek yoghurt.

For the syrup:

1. Combine the blood orange juice, sugar and vanilla in a pan and bring to the boil. Simmer for 2–3 minutes until slightly thickened, then remove from the heat and set aside to cool for 5 minutes.

Citrus cake with 50/50 whip + blood orange syrup

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FURTHER READING + INFO

• Here’s a little cheat sheet of all the different flavour elements available when crafting desserts:

Flavour Inspiration For Desserts (small Wins)

81.5KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

1. Cammy Crolic, Chris Janiszewski, Hedonic Escalation: When Food Just Tastes Better and Better, Journal of Consumer Research, Volume 43, Issue 3, October 2016, Pages 388–406, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucw032