Cake for House Blessing

Yesterday we were priviledged to go to the house blessing for the new Habitat for Humanity houses in Kaiapoi. A family from our church have been working incredibly hard as they have been accepted as one family for a house.

My goodness they do work too!! Not only do they have to contend with moving all the time while waiting for  the house to be finished. The earthquakes have put such pressure on housing. They have to do 500 hours work on the house. Richard is working in his paid job as many hours as he can and then all weekend and some weeknights he is plastering and painting etc on his house. But the awesome thing is that they will never have to move again and this is their house. I am so thrilled for them. Thanks Habitat - you do an amazing job.

So they had the house dedication with the local Mayor there, the MP Kate Wilkinson was meant to be there,  lots of the volunteers were there. So all we took a plate for afternoon tea, listened to speeches and prayed blessing over their new house.

I met a few people and we talked gardening and food, the took my blog details - so if you have logged on - welcome to my blog I hope you like it. Do follow if it interests you.

The cake I took was the one that was on TV the night before on the new Annabel Langbien programme - The Free Range Cook, simple pleasures.

I made two cakes. The round one is cranberry and walnut, the square is apricot and no nuts. Well I preferred the first. Interestingly it was all the ladies that liked the cake. My boys did not and Aaron did not particularly. A great cake to have with a cup of tea. Relatively low fat, easy to make diary free by substituting oil for butter (use slightly less). It does have an old fashioned taste about it and I think that is due to using Baking Soda as the rising agent.



But here is the recipe:

Annabel Langbein - Orange lightning Cake - so called as it is quick as lightening to make.

1 whole organic orange - cut it into quarters, put into the food processor and whizz to paste.
add
1/2 Cup water with 1 teaspoon baking soda dissolved in it
2 eggs
1 Cup Sugar
2 Cups plain flour
1 teaspoon vanilla essence ( I use my homemade one)
125g softened butter - NOT melted.
Whizz together.

add - 1 Cup dried fruit, 1/2 cup walnuts and just pulse to mix in. Do not get it chopped up.

Into lined tin. Bake 1 hour 160oC

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