Photo: Heami Lee • Food Styling: Jessie YuChen
The tail end of winter citrus season meets the bounty of springtime seeds in this fragrant snacking cake. Some of my garden favorites—including poppies, sunflowers, pumpkins, and fennel—lend their edible seeds to a crunchy brown-sugar topping that contrasts with the tender, orange-scented olive oil cake. In trying to come up with a treat to highlight some of the seeds I plant in my garden each year, I reached out to my friend Katy Beyer, head baker at Florence Pie Bar in Florence, Massachusetts. She had the ingenious idea to bake the seeds in a brown sugar and butter mixture at the bottom of the cake, and invert it before serving, like a tarte tatin or an upside-down cake.
The crunchy, chewy seed layer and the cake batter utilize both orange zest and juice: Two medium-size oranges, such as navel or Cara Cara, should produce enough. Hulled pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds are often sold dry-roasted, but you can also use raw hulled seeds since they will toast in the pan as the cake bakes.
Featured in “Seeds Are the Epitome of Spring’s Unlimited Potential.”
Yield: Makes one 9-inch cake Time: 1 hour 50 minutes Ingredients For the seed topping: 3 Tbsp. unsalted butter, plus more for greasing ½ cup dark brown sugar 1 Tbsp. fresh orange juice 1 tsp. finely grated orange zest
