This cake looks deceptively simple but the photo says everything: golden brown on the outside, crunchy sugar topping and moist and fruity on the inside. Definitely a treat for afternoon tea on a windy autumn afternoon. With a lovely old vintage tea set, of course.
The recipe comes from Mushroom Lane, a quirky ‘fabric, fibre, food & flower’ blog written by Flower, a mother of five who finds time to showcase ‘vintage inspired goodness’ and other wonderful things. She calls it a proper mental feijoa cake which I think I can translate from Kiwi into really awesome.
FEIJOA & ORANGE CAKE
Ingredients
- ½ cup sugar
- 100g butter
- 1 egg
- 1 tablespoon of golden syrup
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 tablespoons hot water
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 ¾ cups flour
- 1 cup feijoa pulp (or try warm stewed feijoas)
- juice and rind of 1 orange
- 4 tablespoons brown sugar
Method
- Beat butter and sugar until creamy. Add egg and golden syrup and beat well. Mix baking soda in water and stir into the mixture. Add flour, baking powder, orange rind and feijoa pulp and mix lightly.
- Pour into a greased tin and bake at 160°C for 45 min.
- Remove from the oven and top with the mixture of brown sugar (try raw or demerara sugar if you prefer) dissolved in the orange juice.
- Return to the oven for another 15 minutes.
- Serve warm with cream or cold as you would a cake.
FEIJOA FEIJOA 
I made the cake today for a meeting of my writing group this afternoon. I offered yoghurt with it and people really liked it, especially one woman who particularly liked the fact that it included lots of feijoas (I have feijoa trees). She said she’d had feijoa loaf recently but could hardly taste the feijoas.
I used two eggs rather than one. It was cooked before the 45 min, probably took about 50 min or a bit less including the extra time with the topping. I’m planning to make it again!
I made this cake yesterday and it was so moist and delicious. Made the mistake of trying to get the cake out of the tin before it cooled and because it was so soft it broke up slightly but it was still super yummy!
Hi, Do you need to cook the orange jiuce with the sugar or just mix juice and sugar without heat.
Thank you!!
It’s a syrup so you want the sugar dissolved… I would microwave together in short bursts and stir until the crystals disappear.
Hi there, I’m starting to try new recipes (I tend to stick to what I know) and I’m looking forward to making this cake. I’m not very experienced in the kitchen, and I was just wanting to check that the 45 minute wait before topping the cake with the juice/sugar mixture is the cooking time (hope so, as that is what I am intending to do) and not an additional 45 mins after that initial cooking time. Can’t wait to eat this!!!
You’ve got it right… the juice and sugar topping goes on at 45 mins for the last 15 minutes, so total cooking time for the cake is 1 hour.
once again sitting here eating ….
umm this cake Love it, love the orange. I didn’t mush my feijoas up to much so there are some nice chunks ( had about a cup and half of them) which have soaked up the orange juice nicely. think it could do with a blob of cream, will correct that with the next piece ;)
Oh have the ginger chutney sitting in the cupboard will let you know how that is in about a week.
Thank you so much for putting this blog together.
Yum, this was a nice cake. I too was confused about the orange until I read through the recipe!
The recipe also doesn’t state how much boiling water to use to dissolve the soda. I used about 2Tblspns and that seemed to work fine.
Great guess… that’s the amount specified in another version of the recipe that I have. I’ve amended the recipe and put in a note… hopefully it’s absolutely clear now. You’ve got me worried now… there’s definitely a chasm between online recipe writers and professional editors with test kitchens! Think I’ll make this one this week too.
not sure what sized tin to use… how high will it rise?
It’s not a big cake. A 20cm ring tin or a jam roll tin (if you like it square) are recommended.
There is no orange in this recipe?
Orange juice is used in the sugar syrup topping (step 3). I will adapt the ingredients list so that it is clearer. Thanks for pointing that out.