Orange & Almond Steamed Bites
These almond orange cupcakes are made with only six ingredients, and they are gluten free ! Oranges, orange blossom water for perfume, almond meal ( NOT flour), eggs, extra virgin olive oil, and sugar. They smell amazing, are soft to the touch, and will melt in your mouth. If you are nut intolerant, you may try with cup for cup gluten free flour for sure, but it may be more dense.
It’s Easter season and the end of orange season. Before these sweet fruit disappear, let’s celebrate it’s wonderful flavor into a cake ! Last year, I transformed an orange cake recipe into a delicious soft and cloudy orange and almond cupcake. It was a hit at Easter, all kids loved it, even with such a strong flavor! So I needed to try again and share it with you.
These almond orange cupcakes are made with only six ingredients, and they are gluten free ! Oranges, orange blossom water for perfume, almond meal ( NOT flour), eggs, extra virgin olive oil, and sugar. They smell amazing, are soft to the touch, and will melt in your mouth. If you are nut intolerant, you may try with cup for cup gluten free flour for sure, but it may be more dense.
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A Good Cake Does Not Need Icing
I am not a sweet tooth but I do love cakes in the steam cooker more than in the oven. Oftentimes, the crust on the cake and the browning from the Maillard reaction feel like many cakes taste the same. In my steam cooker, the browning and crusting does not happen, because of the steam. Cakes have a very soft, cloudy consistency. At first you may believe : liking a cake without a crust is like liking crustless bread : weird! I am here to say, it’s not like bread.
The Cake’s Taste Should Be Strong Enough To Suffice
First, I love cakes I when I can recognize the ingredients and I don’t feel like I need icing to like it. May be it’s the French in me, but icing is too sweet and adds more sugar to an already sweet cake. I get an overload from it.
Second, adding more sweetener distracts from the real taste of the cake. So if it is a neutral type of cake like vanilla or pound cake, I won’t mind the icing. But if it is a chocolate cake or a fruity cake, please, no icing: I want to smell and TASTE the full spectrum of that culinary experience.
In short, a good cake does not require icing. But it certainly may improve with some dressing on top.
Cupcakes or Bites?
If to you , like most Americans, cupcake means super sweet tiny cake with tons of icing, you can call my cupcake a bite, that’s fine. But that is delicious, and I guarantee the orange taste is so powerful and natural you won’t need any frosting!
What Makes The Orange Taste Come Across So Strongly?
The orange taste is so strong because I use the whole orange, with the skin ( or a skin and a half). Also, the orange is steamed for 30 minutes before being blended into the dough. In some recipes I read online, as oranges are boiled two hours. Needless to say, a lot of nutrients and taste are gone after that long in boiling water. What a shame! 30 minutes in the steam cooker are enough as the steam gently penetrates the fruit to cook it. Thanks to the steam, 30 minutes is long enough to soften the fruit, and the natural taste remains very strongly!
Why does steam cooking improve these cakes so much?
Steaming Preserves Nutrients
As I mentioned before, gentle – not pressure – steaming preserves nutrients by not boiling ingredients, and it cooks quickly by gently penetrating foods like your skin in a sauna. The result is that most foods you cook in there are soft. With experience, you learn to cook them just the right time so they also remain crunchy and retain structure, texture and color. Color and texture, together with smell and taste, are markers of nutrient density.
Steaming Highlights Natural Tastes
Beside that, without the browning of the Maillard reaction that happens on a pan, in an oven or on a grill, the cooking with steam allows foods to retains its original taste, and it becomes a feast for your tastebuds without any need for additives!
That’s what I love about eating steamed foods and meals: it is a real rediscovery of the natural intensity of the tastes in your foods!
What do I need to make the Almond And Orange Cupcakes?
You Need A Vitaliseur Steam Cooker
I explained in a recent post that not all steam cookers are equal. You probably can use another type of steam cooker, but I cannot guarantee the same temperature, nor that my cooking times will be accurate with other tools. Neither may, of course, the taste be as good. I can tell you for sure that a pressure cooker is NOT the kind of steam cooker I am talking about!
The steam cooker I enthusiastically and freely promote is a wonderful ally for your health: it preserves nutrients, cleanses foods while respecting their natural identity, nutrient density and taste. Meanwhile it works very fast, making it fairly easy to get a meal ready in 30 to 40 minutes.
If cooking vegetables, eggs and rice did not already motivate you to try it out, starting baking cakes and enjoying sweet treats without too much guilt may! Want to purchase a Vitaliseur ? Check my page “Tools and Ingredients” to learn more, and make sure to use my code steamedcuisine for 10% off at check out!
wonderful with or without icing!
You need an immersion blender or a Vitamix
To make these orange bites, you will need to blend the steamed orange either with a powerful blender like Vitamix or with an immersion blender. Only one of these will blend the orange thoroughly enough to mix well into the dough!
NB: If you are into food safety and stay away from plastic, Vitamix makes a stainless steel blender container that works awesome. I bought it a few years ago and it is great ! I don’t mind that I can’t see through it.
Silicone Cupcake Molds
These Silicone cupcake molds are the ones I use, they are individual molds that work well on their own and are great in the steam cooker ! They are also dishwasher safe, so less work for me!
More recipes like this:
- Need a sweet small sized treat? Try Chocolate Hazelnuts Einkorn Steamed Bites !
- Need another fruity, gluten free steamed dessert? Try the Lemon and Olive oil almond cake !
- If you subscribe to my newsletter, you will receive an exclusive E-book with three steamed cakes recipes! Make sure to subscribe to my bimonthly newsletter and get all the updates on steam cooking!
- Before you hit the dessert, make sure to eat a good entree with it ! There are plenty on my blog: entree salads, salads,sweet dips, spicy dips, entrees with crust like quiche or tomato tarte.
Bon appétit
Orange Almond Steamed Cupcakes
Ingredients
- 2 large oranges (including 1.5 orange skin)
- 6 eggs
- 9 oz / 255 grams) ground almonds
- 7 oz / 200 grams sugar
- 1.5 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tsp orange blossom water
Instructions
- Fill up the tank of the steam cooker up to 1/3 of the tank volume ( 1.5 inches should do). Turn on stove on high heat.
- While waiting for the pot to steam abundantly, wash the oranges thoroughly.
- When hot, add the oranges into the steam basket and cover with the lid. Cook oranges for 30 to 35 minutes with the skin on. To make sure oranges are cooked enough, apply pressure on each side and see that it is soft but not mushy.
- Remove oranges from the steam basket and let them cool down for 10 minutes. Remove half of the skin of one of the oranges. Then cut them open and remove the seeds.
- While oranges cool down, beat the eggs in a food processor or large bowl. Add the sugar and beat until it doubles volume. Set aside.
- Blend the almonds in a blender and add the almond meal to the eggs and sugar mixing bowl. Set aside.
- Puree the oranges including the peels of one and a half orange in a food processor or in a bowl with an immersion blender.
- Add the orange puree, to the dough and mix thoroughly. Then add the olive oil, orange blossom water, and a pinch of salt.
- Pour into the individual silicone cupcake molds to the top ( the bites will not raise too much), decorate with pistachio pieces, coconut flakes or pumpkin seeds!
- Place as many filled cupcakes into the steam basket as you can fit in (this is what I call "one batch" ) and place the lid over it. Cook each cupcake batch for 15 minutes. Before you take cupcakes out, test it with a toothpick, and make sure the toothpick comes out mostly dry. Let cupcake cool down completely before removing them from the mold.
- Enjoy as outdoor snack or as dessert for you and your guests! Bon appétit!
PS: I do not display calory count as I do not believe calories matter as much as the quality of your WHOLE food does. Sugar for sure is not healthy in high quantity. However, you can enjoy life and little treats especially if you make them yourself and know the ingredients that you use to make it!
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