Orange pie with dried fruits

Easy and rather quick (for pastry) recipe of tasty fragrant orange pie with prunes, dried apricots and walnuts. Great thing for tea time and for children that don’t like healthy snacks like prunes – this orange pie will change their mind! Actually this recipe is so easy that even a child will succeed in baking orange pie.

This pie is a kind of flatbread, don’t expect soft spongy texture – this pie is different. It will be dense with a little bit crispy crust that will lose its crustiness, if stored. If some orange pie is left, store it wrapped in a plastic bag.

Ingredients:

• 500 g of all-purpose wheat flour
• 200 g of rice flour
• 3 tsp of baking powder
• 600 ml of orange juice
• 180 g of sugar
• 50 ml of flavorless oil
• Zest from 3 oranges (weight of 3 oranges ~600-700 g)
• 300 g of dried apricots and prunes (without kernels)
• 50 g of walnuts

Use packaged orange juice for baking, don’t waste freshly squeezed orange juice for this pie. Anyway 3 oranges won’t give you 600 ml of juice and the pie will require more sugar. Peeled oranges you can use for very easy traditional Moroccan dessert. (Oops! Give me some time to publish this recipe please).

If you don’t like walnuts try to replace them with any other nuts. I’ve tried to bake a pie with dried fruits only, the result wasn’t that good – there was a lack of taste, like something is missing though the pie is full of fragrant oranges.

Instructions

1. Dice walnuts, prunes and dried apricots.

2. There are 2 ways how to take zest off oranges:

a) All previous times I was grating zest from orange – it’s quite boring and tiring.

b) Now I’ve got an idea to cut off zest and then blend it with some juice with a hand blender. It will be much faster, next time I’ll try to do it this way.

3. Mix both kinds of flour with baking powder.

4. In another bowl mix grated/blended zest with orange juice, sugar and oil. Blend it with a spoon or spatula to make sugar dissolve.

5. While the oven is preheating to 180°C (I use convection mode), combine liquid ingredients with flour and knead the dough or batter. Well, I can’t say what is it – dough or batter, while it’s too liquid for a dough (you’ll need to use 2 tablespoons or spatula to knead it) and not enough liquid for batter.

6. Add nuts & dried fruits to the dough and mix it, so they will spread equally. Pour the dough on a baking sheet (it should be covered with parchment paper of good quality or with silicone mat).

7.  And spread it with a spatula or a tablespoon.

8. Put orange pie in hot oven and bake it for 40 min.