Fruit Salad with Port Wine

Recipe Ingredients:

• 1 Round Melon (cut into two halves, flesh removed and cut into pieces)
  
• 3 Fleshy Oranges (segments removed without skin, pip's or membranes)
  
• 1 bunch of grapes seedless (cut in halves)
  
• 1 banana (cut in slices)
  
• 1 Red apple (cut in quarters and then slice with the skin)
  
• 1 tin of pineapple (or half of fresh pineapple) (cubed)
  
• 1 Ripe peach (cut into little pieces)
  
• 1/2 fresh orange juice
  
• 1/2 pineapple juice
  
• juice of a whole lemon
  
• 2 shots of Port wine
  
• pinch of cinnamon
  
• a couple of scrapes of nutmeg
  
• 1 soup spoon full of denmerra sugar
  

The preparation is simple, just mix all the chopped up fruit in a ceramic bowl, the melon skins should be immediately refrigerated after the flesh is scooped out. Then mix into the fruit all the liquids and condiments. and leave these to mature and ferment for a minimum of two hours (I prefer leaving them overnight) in the fridge.

Then you present the salad in the chilled melon halves, or in small ramekins etc, you you'd like to indulge you can also place a spoon of clotted cream on each serving on top and a mint leave.

Orange Cake "Large" for Slicing

Recipe Ingredients: (was enough to cut 70 rectangular slices)

• 300grs of butter (or baking margarine)
  
• 300grs of sugar
  
• 4 oranges (2 cut in slices and 2 "whole" blitzed into creamy pulp)
  
• 6 eggs
• 300grs of flour
  
• 2 soup spoon of baking powder
  
• 2 teas spoons of orange essence
  
• a little of dememera sugar
  

Couldn't be easier... Beat the sugar with the butter, until you obtain a light and whitish cream, once that is done put the eggs (pre-mixed) in, a little at the time keeping the beating of the cream, this way attaining even a more creamy and full of air dough.

Once that is done, add the two oranges in pulp + the orange essence, (mix the pulp in well with a wooden spoon in a folding gentle action to try not to release any of the air contained in the dough), lastly add the flour, a little at the time as well, again folding action and gentle, until all is incorporated in the dough.

Then place the dough in a large tray previously greased and floured, I also used a Teflon baking sheet to avoid the cake sticking to the pan (worked a treat). On top of the dough lay the orange slices and cover the top of each slice with some dememera sugar, to allow them to crystallize and not burn as that would leave a bitter taste, (also if you think the taste of the orange skin may be too strong for you, you can always peals the slicing oranges prior to slicing).

The whole thing goes in a preheated oven at 180ºC for around 20-25 minutes, once done remove the cake from the oven, and let it cool a little before attempting to remove it from the container, this is where the Teflon came in handy as I just picked the four corners of it to remove the cake from the container to a cooling rack.

Optionally at the end, you can also squeeze a further two oranges and boil the juice with some sugar to make a liquid syrup to pour over the cake and get it even more moist, as this is a moist cake already, and very spongy and light. Then let it cool completely and slice it into rectangles.