With the snow falling outside, I embraced the cabin fever and baked something. Sometimes only cake will do.
I ended up choosing the sticky orange marmalade cake from the Great British Bake Off cookbook. This is a pretty fab book – I was lucky enough to get a copy a couple of birthdays ago and I turn to it regularly. It’s a really good all-round baking book and I’ve made quite a few things out of it before, my favourites probably being the very moreish chocolate crackle cookies.
This seemed like a great cold weather bake and I just happened to have a jar of mum’s home-made marmalade in the cupboard… It’s just a pretty standard sponge stirred through with a generous splodge of marmalade to make the sweet, rich sponge a bit more interesting. Once the cake is done, you warm through more of the marmalade and spread it over the top of the cake and leave it to cool before drizzling over some glacé icing. I didn’t alter the recipe much except to let the marmalade down a bit with a tablespoon or so of water to make it a bit more liquid and poked the cake all over with a skewer so the syrup had a chance to sink into the sponge to make it extra sticky, leaving the shreds of orange on top.
It’s quite a grown-up cake (with the strong kick from the marmalade) and I think a little wedge would make a lovely afternoon tea, if that’s your bag (and makes a nice change from its mainstream sister, the lemon drizzle). Otherwise, scoff it anon. It’s a great chance to show off some lovely home-made marmalade if you happen to have some knocking around!
You can find the recipe here if you want to give it a try.
domesticated science 