Marmalade Cake

Marmalade Cake

This recipe can convert a marmalade hater, it’s brilliantly flavoured with orange and delicious with cream or pouring custard. Light and airy, it can be served with tea or as a dessert. I have adapted this recipe from Nigella Lawson. Marmalade is one of those ingredients often associated with bad memories, so buy a good quality marmalade that’s full of real fruit and citrus flavour, rather than burnt sugar. If you make your own marmalade you can of course adjust the bitterness by the length of time you reduce it.

Cake

250g unsalted butter, at room temperature
75g sugar
75g brown sugar
150g for the cake and 75g for the glaze
225g all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
Zest of 1 orange
4 eggs
3 tbsp orange juice

Glaze

75g marmalade
3 tbsp orange juice

Butter and lightly flour an 9” cake tin. Preheat your oven to 325F.

Using a paddle attachment on a stand mixer, cream the butter with the two sugars together until pale. Add in the marmalade and mix well, continuing to use the paddle attachment. Using a spatula, gently fold in the dry ingredients with the orange zest, if you still see bits of dry at this stage don’t fuss, you don’t want to overwork the flour. Pop the bowl back onto the stand mixer and add the eggs one by one, beating on low until each egg is incorporated. Finally, add in the orange juice, pour the batter into the prepared tin and bake in the preheated oven for 45 - 60 minutes until the edges are just beginning to colour and the centre is firm to the touch.

While the cake is baking, make the glaze by putting the marmalade and orange juice into a small saucepan, gently warm until smooth. Pour over the cake while hot.

Serve the cake with softly whipped cream or pouring custard!

Note: If you don’t have a stand mixer you can do this with a hand blender, food processor or by hand. The key is you don’t want to overwork the flour at any stage or you will end up with a dense and heavy cake!