Keeping Warm with Frangipane Baked Oranges

Sundays are such nice days in the cold, damp, wintery months.

A warming fire, fun with the “kids”

lots of football and a deliciously warming dessert.

How do you spend your chilly Sunday afternoons?

Baked Oranges

Frangipane is a mixture of butter, nuts and sugar. I’ve added the cherries (based on a recipe found in cuisine.com) to make a deliciously fruity filling and topping.

Cuisine suggests trying other fillings with fig or hazelnut and date. They also used apples in their recipe for a baked apple frangipane. Apples such as Granny Smith might work well in this recipe.

5 oz dried cherries
2/3 cup orange juice
1/2 cup unsalted butter
2 TBS granulated sugar
2 tsp flour
1 small egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
4 Navel Oranges *navel oranges have no seeds = very important!
ice cream or whipped cream to serve.

Peel the oranges and remove as much of the pith as possible. Make sure to remove the center so you have a little hole into the orange. Cut in half and cut a flat on one of the halves so the orange will sit steady in a baking dish coated with non stick cooking spray. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Put the cherries in a saucepan with the orange juice over medium heat and bring to a boil. Simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.

Beat the butter and sugar until pale then add the flour, egg and vanilla. Stir in the walnuts then add the cherries and juice.

Place the oranges in the baking dish if you haven’t already and put some of the butter-cherry mixture in between each half. Top with other half. Place any remaining cherry mixture on top and around the sides of the oranges.

Bake for 40 – 50 minutes and serve hot with ice cream or whipped cream. Serves 4.