A Mature cake for a man turning 30

Written on February 23rd 2010.
Today my wonderful amazing beautiful boyfriend turns 30. I wanted to do something special so I decided to make my first cake from scratch. I knew I wanted to make a pound cake with yummy citrus and vanilla flavors. There was a coconut orange cake on foodbuzz top 10 yesterday and I decided this would be the perfect two flavors for my pound cake. I stopped by the grocery store to pick up some last minute ingredients and was super excited to see a beautiful bunch of blood oranges, they will make my cake a beautiful pink tone, now if only they were organic...I scrubbed them extra good, just in case. Unfortunetly I do not own a hand mixer, and making icing was going to be too difficult so I thought doing some candied oranges and a sugar glaze to garnish the cake would be delicious, and beautiful. After consulting about 15 different recipes or so with my friend Molly - my assistant for the day we came up with the delicious recipe that follows.
Blood orange & coconut pound cake - INGREDIENTS: Bake in 12'' round baking pan or loaf pan.

2 cups flour (all purpose whole wheat and unbleached white mixed) 

1tsp baking soda

1tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup unsalted organic butter 

1 1/2 cups organic cane sugar

3 eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp almond extract

1 1/2 cups unsweetened shredded coconut 

1 blood orange - zest

1 blood orange - juiced

1/4 cup sour cream 

BAKING: Pre- heat oven to 350 degrees. Have three clean bowls ready for prep. All cold ingredients should be room temperature. Don't forget the grease and dust the pan with butter and flour. 

Add all dry ingredients together and sift thoroughly . Cream  butter sugar together with hand mixer or with spoon. Mix in eggs in, add vanilla & almond extracts zest and juice. Then you should layer the flour and sour cream ie. add a bit of flower, then a bit of the sour cream, then repeat starting and ending with the flour. Last add your coconut. Bake for 25-40 mins depending on your oven. Check after 25 mins.... Check cake with long wooden pick, to check if its done at 25 mins. Adjust the time depending on your oven.  You want the stick to come out dry and cake to have a beautiful golden tone. 

Candied Blood Oranges INGREDIENTS: Candied Oranges

6 oranges - thinly sliced by hand of with mandloin 

4 cups unbleached cane sugar 

1 cup water

COOK: Blanch oranges in boiling water for 2 mins or so. Remove from water. Save boiled water for the syrup.  Add water and sugar in sauce pan heat until sugar is melted. Then add the oranges until mixture starts to simmer. Cook for 45 minutes and try not to stir the mixture, shake the pan instead. Remove oranges from syrup and place on wax paper - allow to dry and harden over night. 

COMMENTS:  While the cake was beautiful, and delicious it was a bit dry. My conclusions are that the cake was baked for 3-5 minutes too long, or perhaps there should have been another egg or more sour cream. The fact that we used half whole wheat could have also been a culprit or perhaps too much coconut. Either way it didn't stop anyone from enjoying it. Molly came over for left overs last night, and I think she had three pieces. So I will conclude that this recipe is still open to interpretation, but still deserves a pat on the back to the both of us.