I’ve been doing some research lately on SEO, an aspect of internet business I am greatly lacking in. Apparently crucial to running a successful blog, SEO or search engine optimization is a technical, behind-the-scenes area that uses specific words and plugins to help Google easily read your content and push your blogs and recipes to the top of the Google search lists. This is obviously super important for bloggers and recipe developers as people actually need to see and read our recipes in order for us to run a mildly successful recipe writing business. It’s an area that I will admit, I am not strong in, and could use a little extra support in since most of my posts ring in somewhere near the bottom of the billion pages of Google search results, but if I’m being honest, there’s something about the whole SEO optimization thing that feels uncomfortable to me. One of the things I’ve read over and over again is that you should be performing key word searches before creating recipes so that you’re able to see the types of recipes people are already Google-ing and then create recipes based off of that. This idea feels so inauthentic to me! My whole mission in life is teaching people how to elevate their baking, using creative flavors and ingredients that are a bit unexpected and teaching techniques that the average home baker may be unfamiliar with. Often times, this means that the types of recipes people search for are recipes that they are already familiar with like chocolate chip cookies or brownies or something with a peanut butter chocolate combination. Not many people sit down and search “sour orange and tequila upside down cake”, not because they don’t like it or it’s a bad recipe, but simply because it’s a flavor combination that they didn’t know they needed! And I love love love introducing people to baked goods that they didn’t know they needed. But that does put me in a bit of a pickle, because in order to get my quirky recipes out there, I need to get people to my blog because what is the point if no one even ever sees them. Most of this rambling is me processing and getting all my feelings out into words (which is also an SEO no-no— don’t talk about things that aren’t directly related to the recipe, but I’m a real person and since I pay to keep this website up and running, I think I can occasionally go off-topic.) All of this to say, I’m going to continue sharing weird flavor combinations and encouraging you to bake out of your comfort zone, but I may include a s’mores cookie bar (a recipe I’m currently working on so keep an eye out) every now again to keep the internet happy. 

let’s talk about cake

I’ve been planning a version of this Sour Orange and Tequila Upside Down Cake in my head for months. If you know me, you know I LOVE a good upside down cake. I even wrote a whole little e-book discussing how wonderful upside down cakes are at showcasing your fun produce finds—if you don't have a copy, what are you waiting for?! I also saw a picture of a Salted Pineapple and Mezcal Cake on What’s Cooking Good Looking’s site a few months ago and ever since then, I’ve been waiting for my perfect boozy produce cake to arrive. Then I got sour oranges. They are tart and slightly bitter, similar to lemons, but with all of the floral brightness of oranges and they were perfect!

The cake itself is a rendition of a base cake I use in a bunch of different recipes. It’s easy to throw together, doesn’t use a mixer, and can be adapted in all sorts of ways. The sour oranges are marinated in tequila and then cutely arranged into a layer of brown sugar caramel, topped with cake batter and then baked.

When testing this recipe, I was a little frustrated. Everything tasted perfect, but my oranges decided to do a little slip-n-slide action and it did not come out as pretty as I had hoped. I toyed with the idea of re-doing it for photogenic purposes but decided against it for two reasons: 1) I was all out of sour oranges and it’s not easy to get your hands on more. I could have done the cake just as easily with blood oranges or sumo or any other citrus, but I really loved the sour orange flavor and I wasn’t quite ready to give that up. 2) Part of me running this blog is to teach you how to make really delicious desserts at your house and a piece of that is making desserts accessible. If everything that I produce is a work of art and looks flawless, that’s really not realistic to the home kitchen. Home kitchens are where we make really tasty food that isn’t always beautiful and that is a-okay! So I promise you that I am a real person whose oranges don’t do exactly what I want every time. I also promise you that this is a great cake recipe that will produce a great cake in your kitchen, but if your baked goods don’t always look like little airbrushed magazine photos, that’s okay! Keep on baking!