Torta de Laranja - IMBB # 14

Thanks to Foodgoat and Ladygoat for hosting this month's edition of Is-My-Blog-Burning and the theme is orange.

This was an easy one for me. Mom's Recipe Book has plenty of recipes featuring oranges, not to mention the orange colour and the one I chose is an orange-based rolled pudding she used to make quite often.

"Torta de Laranja," can be translated maybe as Orange Roly-Poly. In Portuguese a torta is the name given to any confection baked in a low baking sheet and then rolled from one of the sides. In Italian and Spanish the word torta means pie. In Portuguese, like in French, we use the word tarte to mean pie and torta for the rolled confection. By the way, the Brazilians sometimes use rocambole instead of torta. According to my dicttionary, in Brazilian Portuguese a rocambole is a spirited dance. In mainland Portuguese we do not have the word rocambole, but we do have rocambolesco, which means entangled. Anyway leave it up to the Brazilians to come up with the cuttest expressions.

This recipe looks very involved but is really quite simple to make and the rolling gives it a very polished apearance. Tortas can be sweet or savoury and can have a filling or not. The texture of this dessert torta is pudding-like and it has no filling.

The trick with this recipe is to cover the bottom of the greased baking sheet with parchment or wax paper and them grease again. This will ensure that the pudding will unmold. Once baked this pudding will be slightly less than 1/2-inch in height and very fragile. Unmld it onto a clean piece of cloth or paper that has been well sprinkled with sugar. This cloth will then help you roll the pudding.

This dessert it is very sweet, so I recommend that you serve it with crème fraiche or maybe a little chantilly made with very little sugar.

Torta de Laranja

• 250 gr. sugar (1 cup + 2 tbsp)
• 6 eggs
• 1 tbsp butter
• 1 tbsp Port wine
• Juice of 2 oranges (about 1 cup liquid)

Pre-heat oven to 350-degrees F. Grease a 13 x 9-inch baking sheet and cover the bottom with parchment paper and grease again.
Mix well the butter and the sugar. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. In the end add the Port wine and the orange juice and mix until well blended. The batter will be very liquid.
Put the pan in the pre-heated oven and cook for about 40 minutes or until you insert the tip of a knife in the pudding and it comes out clean.
While the pudding is cooking, prepare either a clean kitchen cloth or a sheet of parchment or wax paper to receive the cooked pudding. The cloth or paper has to be slightly larger than the pan you baked the pudding in. Sprinkle with sugar.
Take the pan out of the oven and wait about 5 minutes to let it cool a bit. The sides of the pudding should separate from the pan, but you can pass a knife around the sides of the pudding, just to make sure. Unmold ont the prepared cloth. Carefully, peel the parchment paper off. Choose the side you want to roll from. I rolled mine from the shorter side. With the help of the cloth, carefully roll your pudding. At the end, tighten the cloth a little bit around the roll, to help it keep its shape. Sometimes, as the puddingf cools it has a tendency to break at the sides. Keeping the cloth or paper around it for a while will help it keep its shape.
Carefully, peel the cloth off and transfer the torta to the serving plate. This quantity is enough for 4 people.