Orange and Pomegranate Cake

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Forget the blueberry, it is the pomegranate that is the fruit of the decade. The fruit that has gone from zero to hero in no time at all, due largely to the bottled juice that is now easily available and the user-friendly cellophane packages of ready-prepared seeds in the supermarkets. They save peeling the tough skin and delicately tearing away the bitter white pith, and prevent the sort of scarlet splatters that Dexter would be proud of. I buy them ready prepared, as chilled juice, and in whole form. They look regal in a bowl. I would insist that they seem to be sweeter than they once were, but then the same has happened with grapefruits, tomatoes and pretty much everything else. The culinary equivalent of dumbing down. That said, the jewel-like seeds still have a bite to them, and are endlessly useful to the open minded. A handful in a salad? Yes, please. In with the breakfast cereal, scattered over grilled lamb cutlets with mint and yoghurt or simply eaten from the hand like peanuts. In many ways, their startling acidity can be used to replace the lemon. Pomegranate juice can be included in a salad dressing, a marinade (with olive oil and cumin seed), in the icing for a cupcake (stir into icing sugar) or to add a note of astringency to grilled meat, as you might squeeze a lemon. With this in mind, I am using the claret-coloured juice in place of lemon in a Middle Eastern-style almond cake. Outrageously moist, grittily sweet and delightfully tart. The colour is glorious.