Squidgy Chocolate Orange Cake

Hmm, apparently my ability to take photos of brown squares of cakes hasn't improved yet...

This is the perfect cake to have in your repertoire - it's so, so easy to put together and quick to bake but the flavour and texture are just divine. I have made it a number of times before, but have tweaked slightly to suit my taste. The original recipe is from Nigella Lawson and it's the Storecupboard Chocolate Orange Cake in How to be a Domestic Goddess. It is also a very adaptable recipe - Nigella herself uses exactly the same ingredients in her Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes in the same book (swapping cherry jam for marmalade), so if you're wondering whether the recipe works as cupcakes, it does. (I have tried this out too, and the cupcakes are very good!)

When I have made it in the past I followed the instructions to use an 8"/20cm round springform tin and always found it needed slightly longer than the specified 50 minutes to bake and it tended to catch and overbrown slightly around the edges before the middle was done. I've made it in an 8"/20cm square tin and after 40-45 minutes it's perfectly cooked around the edges and in the middle - win/win.

The quality of the marmalade is important in the cake. I know that sounds like a silly thing to say because of course it will be - the marmalade is a key ingredient. From experience I know that using too bitter a marmalade will not be very pleasant - even though there is a lot of sugar in the recipe, the bitterness still comes through. This time, I had a jar of marmalade that I had used for a couple of other cakes where I had wanted that bitterness, and had found this particular jar sadly lacking. However it struck me as perfect for this cake, where I don't think you actually want a particularly bitter marmalade. I did want to make sure that the orange flavour was there though and added some of my latest favourite - orange extract (I bought mine from Lakeland - a dangerous place to shop...). This really boosts the orange without any bitterness.

Another brown square...

Squidgy Chocolate Orange Cake
Ingredients
120g butter
100g dark chocolate, roughly broken (I used Green and Blacks 85% cocoa)
245g orange marmalade (I used Bonne Maman Mandarin marmalade)
150g caster sugar
1tsp orange extract
2 large eggs
150g self raising flour

Method (this is truly simple!)
- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Grease and line an 8"/20cm square shallow tin.
- Melt the butter over a low heat and when it is melted add the broken chocolate. Stir until melted.
- Add the marmalade, sugar and extract and stir until well amalgamated.

- Add the eggs, beating them into the mixture until well combined and then add the flour, folding it through to make sure you don't have any unmixed bits.

- Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 40-45 minutes.
- Remove from tin and allow to cool, or eat hot as a pudding with icecream.

I love this cake - it's moist and fudgy and on the start of the cake to brownie scale - at the cake end but with a slightly brownie-like texture due to the high sugar content. The peel in this marmalade is quite fine and soft - I missed the chewy texture of the peel in the more bitter marmalades I've used in the past, but I didn't miss the overall bitterness that too strong a marmalade can give. Adding the orange extract worked well here to boost the orange flavour, as I knew the marmalade didn't have enough punch. This is perfect for an indulgent treat during Chocolate Week.

This would be a great family recipe to make with little ones. The melt and mix method is easy for little hands and the chocolate orange flavour is great for children too - especially if you do what I did and use a relatively mild-flavoured marmalade and boost the flavour with orange extract. This avoids any unwanted bitterness. It's also perfect for harrassed mums who are having dessert demanded of them but haven't got time to think what to make - perfect with custard or icecream. Any leftovers are perfect as a gettting home from school treat. I really hope you make and enjoy this cake - it's one of my perennial favourites!

Marmalade and Apricot Loaf Cake

I really need to start planning more seriously before buying. And then follow through on those plans. Before Christmas I had a vague, half formed idea in my head that it would be really good to make dried apricots in brandy as a gift for my lovely mother. Sadly, time ran away with me and they never did get made. I did accomplish the first step of the plan to make them though... I bought the dried apricots. Really quite a lot of apricots as it happens, because the Kilner jar I was planning on using can take quite a lot of fruit and I thought having a few spare wouldn't be a problem.

I think you're probably getting the idea of where this post is going. Yes, I now need to use up rather a lot of dried apricots. The loaf made a small dent in the bag, but the journey of a thousand miles and all that...

It's a surprisingly good combination. Marmalade and apricot, apricot and marmalade. The apricots (and don't be put off their appearance - I favour the unsulphured dried apricots which are naturally darker than their sulphur dioxide preserved sunny cousins) are intensely sweet and the marmalade adds that bitter edge to counter the sweetness. I was pretty impressed given that I was just glancing around to see what on earth I could do with all these apricots! (Other ideas welcome....)

Hmm, apparently this was such an off-the-cuff loaf that I didn't bother to make a note of either the ingredients or the method. This is annoying and slightly distressing because I want to share this loaf cake, and I want to be able to make it again. Ah well, my (very vague) memories of making it will just have to suffice.

Marmalade and Apricot Loaf Cake
Ingredients (I think I used something approximating the list given below...)
125g softened butter
125g caster sugar
2 eggs
2tbsp homemade marmalade (probably about 40g)

60g dried apricots, chopped small (I used unsulphured and they were rather dry - I was worried they'd shrivel up and be nasty and chewy but they weren't)

125-150g self raising flour (I genuinely can't recall this)
there may or may not have been a spoonful of yogurt in there...

Method - more secure than the ingredients list, as I can remember what I did!

- Preheat the oven to gas 4/180C. Grease and line a 2lb loaf tin. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, marmalade and flour and continue beating until well combined. Fold through the apricots and spoon into the prepared tin. Bake for around 40-50 minutes. I recall thinking that 35 minutes would be enough for this rather shallow loaf cake, but mine took about 50. Remove from the tin and leave to cool on a wire rack.

As I said earlier, this is a successful combination - bitter shreds of peel, sweet chunks of apricot and a rich buttery cake to offset it all. Rather happily consumed by my work colleagues. And rather appropriately, I started this blog 400 posts ago with a marmalade cake for my very first post :-) I have indeed reached 400 posts and although those who find the time to blog every day will no doubt scoff at my measly total, I'm rather proud of myself!

Review: The Great British Bake Off - How to Bake.....

When the Great British Bake-Off was on the BBC last year, I really enjoyed watching the contestants progress through the rounds, seeing what they would come up with for the various different challenges, and seeing how they all interpreted the 'technical challenge' recipes set by Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood. I can't say I've baked many of either Mary or Paul's recipes, not owning any books by them. Quite a few of the recipes from the first series are available here, on the BBC Food website. The new series starts on Tuesday 16th August, 8-9pm, BBC2. There will be 11 episodes and I'm looking forward to it!

I'm sure you can probably guess where this is leading... I was recently contacted by someone from Random House, the publishers who are behind the book that accompanies the new series of the Great British Bake Off to see if I would like to review the book. Now I didn't immediately jump at this offer, because I wasn't sure if the book would contain anything new or indeed, anything I wanted to bake, but after a delay and some umming and ahhing I decided to accept their offer. A book speedily arrived.

Disclaimer: Clearly, this is a publicity exercise for the book, and I received my copy free of charge. However, I have not been paid to write this review, and the opinions contained are my own - good or bad.

The book is laid out in chapters, presumably according to the order of the challenges that the participants will undertake in the TV series; Cakes, Biscuits and Teatime Treats, Bread, Pies and Savoury pastry, Tarts and Sweet Pastry, Patisserie, Puddings and Desserts and finally, Celebration Cakes. The recipes are predominantly by Linda Collister, with some of the technical challenge recipes (7 in total) by Mary Berry or Paul Hollywood, with some 'Best of the Bake Off' recipes in each chapter which are the contestant's own. I really like Linda Collister's baking, from another book that I already own by her, which swayed me to accepting this offer. And although initially dubious I'm glad I did.

The book is well laid out, and beautifully photographed and although some of the recipes don't have corresponding photos there are some very indepth step by step recipe photographs, for the 'How to Make the Perfect....' (one of these in most chapters) and the technical challenge recipes, which is a good idea. I appreciate photos of what I'm aiming for, being more of the inspired by photos than intimidated by them school of thought.

As I went through the book I was glad I'd accepted the offer because there are quite a few recipes that I wanted to bake straightaway, and more that I would like to bake when I have more time or want to challenge myself with something new (pastry and patisserie chapters, I'm thinking of you!). Some of the particularly delicious sounding recipes (well, to my mind anyway) are Rhubarb and Custard Cupcakes, Brandy Snaps, Sticky Maple-Apple Traybake, Monkey Bread, Stilton, Potato and Caramelised Onion Pie, Chocolate, Fennel and Ginger tarts and Chocolate Fudge Hot-Pot Pudding but there are many more calling out my name. I have lots of baking books but I really could spend a long time just baking from this one!

So what did I decide to make to start? I chose Stem Ginger Shortbread, Sticky Orange Marmalade Cake, and Chocolate Velvet Cup Cakes with Chocolate Fudge Frosting.

The stem ginger shortbread was lovely and easy to make, and eat. Perhaps not as crumbly as some I have made before, not my best, but a lovely basic recipe all the same. The sticky orange marmalade cake was lovely - again easy to make (are you seeing a theme emerging here!) but it looked really lovely and showed off my lovely homemade orange marmalade off to good effect. The only slight problem I had with it was that it sunk slightly when it cooled and had overbrowned slightly in the oven. I removed the very top layer of over-browning because the marmalade glaze on the cake and the icing would hide the top of the cake, but I found myself berating myself for not managing to make it perfectly and imagining what Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood would have said had my cake been up for judging. I'm sure that the dip in the middle wouldn't have gone down well, but I think they would have been pleased with the final taste and texture!

My favourite was the chocolate velvet cup cakes with chocolate fudge frosting. These can be found right at the back of the book, in the celebration cakes chapter, and it would be a shame to miss them, because they're delicious!

Chocolate Velvet Cup Cakes with Chocolate Fudge Frosting (reproduced with permission)
Ingredients
175ml semi-skimmed or full-fat milk (I used semi-skimmed aka 2%)
100g dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids)
125g caster sugar
60g unsalted butter, softened
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 large free-range egg, at room temperature, beaten
150g self raising flour, sifted

Method

- Preheat the oven to 180C/gas 4. Pour the milk into a small, heavy-based pan (preferably non-stick). Chop the chocolate and add to the milk with one-third of the sugar. Set over the lowest possible heat and leave until melted and smooth, stirring frequently. Remove from the heat. If necessary, give the liquid a quick whisk to amalgamate, then set aside until needed.

- Put the butter into a mixing bowl and beat until creamy with a wooden spoon or an electric mixer. Add the rest of the sugar and the vanilla and beat thoroughly for about 4 minutes or until the mixture is very light and fluffy.

- Gradually add the egg, beating well after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl from time to time. Using a large metal spoon fold in the flour in 3 batches alternatley with the chocolate liquid. When completely amalgamated spoon the mixture into the paper casess so they are evenly filled.

- Bake for 15-18 minutes or until the cakes are well risen and spring back when gently pressed with a finger. Remove the tray from the oven and leave to cool for about 2 minutes, then transfer the cup cakes to a wire rack and leave to cool completely before icing.

Chocolate fudge frosting
Enough for 12 cupcakes
100g dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), chopped or broken up
1 rounded tablespoon golden syrup
50g unsalted butter

- Put the chocolate, golden syrup and butter into a heatproof bowl. Set over a pan of steaming hot but not boiling water (don't let the base of the bowl touch the water) and melt gently, stirring frequently. As soon as the mixture is smooth remove the bowl from the pan and cool, stirring frequently.

- When very thick and on the point of setting, swirl the frosting on top of the cup cakes using a round-bladed knife. Quickly add any decorations and leave to set.

My notes:

- My chocolate mixture did look a bit grainy, but it seemed to work ok.

- I inadvertently added half of the sugar to the milk mixture (why can't I divide 125g by three and get 40g not 60g???) but just put the rest in with the butter and it was fine!

- They actually took 15 minutes to bake!!! Yay, I usually find my cakes need longer than stated!

- Don't worry that the batter is very runny. I sort of spoon/poured it into the cases feeling very dubious indeed with visions of flat pancakes coming out of the oven only to be greeted by the beauties in the pic below!

I love this chocolate fudge frosting! It was beautifully bitter (I used Green and Black's 72% cooking chocolate) to offset the smooth sweetness of the cakes.

- Don't be greedy like me, and increase the quantities by 50%, you'll have far too much to fit on the cakes!

- The frosting took about 2 hours at ambient temperature (about 20C here) to reach almost-setting point, and until then was pretty much liquid. Have faith, and patience and you'll be rewarded!

These were utterly delicious. The cake was soft and smooth, moist and sweet and was offset really well by the slightly bitter chocolate frosting. I think this will be my go-to recipe for chocolate cupcakes from now, with the added advantage of needing less butter and eggs than a standard recipe and tasting fabulous! I'll also try and remember to make the frosting too, I much, much prefer it to chocolate buttercream which I tend to find too sickly sweet.

And if you've managed to get all the way to the end of that.... I have been offered two copies of the book to give away to my readers, but because it's a heavy book I'm sorry that this is only open to UK readers. Apologies to all my international visitors. To have a chance to win a copy of this book;

1. Become a follower of Cake, Crumbs and Cooking, if you aren't already.
2. Leave me a comment and let me know what your baking nemesis is - does pastry make you pale? do your scones leave people speechless? and what is your absolute favourite thing to bake?

This will close at midnight on the 20th August and I'll pick the winners by random number generator. I'll then contact you by email so if your email isn't obvious on your blog/website, please leave it in your comment :-)

Kedleston Marmalade Cake

This recipe has a slight confession attached. When I was Christmas shopping last year I was rather disorganised and bought presents without people in mind. Present first, recipient later approach (this is an expensive, rubbish approach and I'm not doing it next year - I always end up with presents left over that aren't appropriate for any of my recipients...). Anyway, I could tell you that the book that this recipe came from was one of those leftover presents. And in a way, it was. But truthfully, I saw the book, thought that I'd love to have it, but if I could give it as a Christmas present I would. And so I justified the purchase of another, unnecessary, cookery book for myself. Please tell me I'm not alone (if you even understood what I was saying there!)

Anyhow, the book in question is The National Trust Teatime Baking Book by Jane Pettigrew and it's full of lovely, old fashioned recipes - none of your cupcakes with buttercream frosting piled a mile high here thank-you-very-much. Instead, recipes for such delights as Boxty Bread, Barm Brack, Kentish Huffkins, Singin' Hinny, Secretary Tarts, Boodle Cake and a whole host of other delicious cakes, breads, biscuits and so forth. Don't the names make you just want to whip them up as soon as possible? In fact, probably the only thing holding me back from making more of the recipes in here is the lack of pictures. There are some pictures in my version of the book, but not every recipe is illustrated and I tend to like to know what I'm aiming for. But a jar of marmalade prompted me to search for a suitable cake in which to include it, and this is what I came across. The recipe can also be found online here or here.

Kedleston Marmalade Cake (adapted from The National Trust Baking Book)
Ingredients
175g butter, softened
25g light muscovado sugar
25g dark muscovado sugar (I ran out of light muscovado...)
4tbsp (70g) golden syrup
2 eggs
140g orange marmalade
275g wholemeal self raising flour
2 tsps baking powder (I only used one, but it needed the second)
1/2 tsp ground ginger
60ml apple juice (but orange was specified - I didn't have any open)

Method
- Preheat the oven to gas 4/180C. Grease and line an 8"/20cm deep round cake tin.
- Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the syrup and beat again.
- Add the marmalade and beat in, then add the eggs, flour, baking powder and ginger.
- Beat to combine then add the apple/orange juice and stir in to achieve a soft, dropping consistency.
- Spoon into the prepared tin and bake for about an hour until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
- Leave to cool for 15 minutes or so before turning out to cool completely on a wire rack.

The notes with the recipe say that the cake would go well with Ceylon or Assam tea. I assume you wouldn't want anything too delicate due to the bitterness provided by the marmalade.
This was such a tasty cake. I wish I had used my own homemade marmalade though, which is more bitter than the bought version I used. The marmalade could be tasted, but was quite subtle and I think my own would have been better. The ginger wasn't really obvious and I'm pleased to have found another cake that works really well with wholemeal flour. The crumb was so soft and moist and crumbled beautifully when you ate it. Just delicious, I can imagine the inhabitants of Kedleston Hall partaking of this cake in the middle of the afternoon, seated on the rolling lawns and sipping tea from delicate china cups and saucers. Or perhaps retiring to the drawing room to prevent the ladies from being exposed to the sun. You can read a brief history of Kedleston Hall here, on the National Trust website. The National Trust are now looking after this imposing looking Hall, and having discovered that it's not too far from me I'd really like to visit now!

Wholemeal apple and marmalade cake

It's seville orange season now, time to make marmalade (more on this in a future post...) and therefore, time to use marmalade in baking. When I was thinking how I could use some of my newly created marmalade lake (actually that gives the wrong impression; I do have a lot of marmalade now, but it isn't a lake because it has successfully set!) I looked through a couple of my newer cookery books and lo and behold, found this recipe in Nigel Slater's Tender Volume II, page 684 for those who have the book. I'm trying to make more of an effort to get inspiration from the many cookery books I own and this cake was definitely inspired by the apple chapter of Nigel's book. There are lots of other lovely looking recipes in there too - mmmm, apples!

I first made this cake last year when the recipe was published on the Guardian website, here (scroll down past the fish pie recipe) and have even noted down that I made it on the day it was published. Sadly, almost year later it remained unblogged, but all is well as I'm correcting that now! I remembered to take photos of it, but didn't get a piece to eat - it was popular and all got taken before I managed to get a piece for myself. This should really have been a clue to how good it is, and I did keep meaning to make it again (the road to hell is paved with good intentions and all that...) but the opportunity never really arose again until now.

I was slightly worried that the relatively small amount of baking powder in the recipe wouldn't give the cake enough lift, but I'm glad I trusted Nigel's judgement on this one, because it was fine. I think the wholemeal flour added to the flavour and moist texture of the cake too, and complemented the other fruity flavours. Although the top looks quite dark, it really didn't taste overdone at all, it was just right. The only change I made to the recipe was to omit the orange zest, simply because I didn't have an unwaxed orange to hand.

I used a mixture of demerara sugar and the sugar crystals you see above to sprinkle on the top of the cake - don't miss this step (I'm terrible for remembering final steps like this - once the cake is in the tin my mind just says oven straight away usually).

You can see just how deliciously moist this cake was - chunks of soft apple, strands of contrastingly bitter orange marmalade peel and juicy raisins all set against a delicately spiced soft moist crumb. The finishing touch was the crunchy sugar on the top - it was such a good textural contrast to the rest of the cake that I wished there had been more. This isn't a rich fruit cake in the sense of wedding cakes or Christmas cakes, but it's certainly one of the nicest fruit cakes I've eaten for a long time. I will definitely be making this again.

The final picture here is from last years cake - the crumb is a much lighter colour because I used white self raising flour rather than plain wholemeal flour plus baking powder, but much the same delicious moist texture. I can also see from other photos that I forgot to sprinkle last years cake with demerara sugar, which is a pity because that added a lot to the pleasure of eating this cake.

MM4 Marmalade buttons

I've been meaning to make these for ages now, the combination of bitter marmalade, chewy peel and crunchy sugar against the background of a buttery melting biscuit was irresistible. Hmm, how did I manage to wait so long to make them?

It was partly thanks to Foodycat for bumping the thread discussing these little biscuits on Dan's forums that reminded me of their existence, in combination with an inventory of the cupboards that revealed more marmalade than one person can reasonably be expected to consume in a lifetime... ok, I exaggerate slightly but you get the picture. For this batch of buttons I chose 'Three fruit marmalade' boasting lemons, oranges and grapefruit. I complemented this by choosing lemon and orange peel to cut up. This would be my only proviso for making these; chopped mixed peel is bitter and nasty, mixed peel that you chop yourself is chewy and citrussy and sweet and delicious. It's more than worth the stickiness and time (little) that you will expend to chop your own peel for a far superior result. You know you want to...

I made the recipe exactly as specified here and used semolina rather than ground rice, because my semolina was open and the ground rice wasn't. Mine took 20 minutes to become golden brown. There are a few links to other people who've made them on the link above and Foodycat's version is here.

Were they worth the wait? Yes and no. They were delicious - buttery and crumbly, with a good orangey flavour from the marmalade and peel. But they were a little soft for my taste - I prefer my biscuits with more crunch than these gave. I don't feel that I could have cooked them any more though, as the more well-done ones were verging on overdone. However, I really did like the peel in them and the marmalade, so I might try applying this to a different base biscuit recipe. I was also quite pleased with the crunchy demerara crust. I have a feeling that this would have been even more successful if I'd read the instructions in the recipe that say to wet the dough log before adding the sugar to help it stick. D'oh!

Colleagues were pleased but I'll have to experiment further to find my favourite biscuit.

Chocolate raspberry and blackcurrant cake

This one is my take on Nigella Lawson's Storecupboard Chocolate Orange Cake (which sadly isn't on her website yet) from How to be a Domestic Goddess. I've made this cake many times in its original format - that is, with bitter marmalade and in an 8" round cake tin and it truly is delicious. However, the last time I made it, I decided that delicious though it was, I wanted to try something a little less bitter. She suggests variations at the end of the recipe, including replacing the marmalade with raspberry jam, which sounded perfect. However, as is the way of things, I had insufficient raspberry jam, but had just opened a jar of blackcurrant (see also, Jaffa Cakes!!!) so I decided on a mix of the two. This was a good plan and worked well!!!

Lovely sticky top and bursts of blackcurrant flavour make this an absolute winner!

Chocolate raspberry and blackcurrant cake

Ingredients

125g butter
100g dark chocolate, broken into pieces (I used Lindt 70%)
150g good raspberry jam
100g good blackcurrant jam
125g caster sugar
2 large eggs, beaten
150g self raising flour

Method
- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Line a tin. I used a 7" square tin this time, but the recipe specifies an 8" round.
- Melt the butter in a large saucepan (the saucepan is your mixing bowl and will have to take all the other ingredients).
- When it is melted, add the chopped chocolate and leave until starting to melt. Stir the chocolate until completely melted. Add the jams and sugar and stir well until smooth and amalgamated. Add the eggs and stir again to combine.
- Add the flour and beat in until smooth.
- Pour into the prepared tin and bake for about 50 minutes, although mine always takes about an hour. It's a good idea to cover the cake with foil for the last 20-30 minutes or so (i.e. cover after about 30 mins of cooking) as I find the top gets very dark and erm... caramelised. OK then, burnt. It never really tastes burnt though, just slightly bitter, and as this cake has a bitter tang when made with marmalade anyway, it never seems to matter.

- Remove cake from oven and allow to cool on a wire baking rack.

I don't bother with any decoration - this is a cake that doesn't seem to need fancy-ing up at all. Just enjoy it how it is.

The other thing I love about this cake is just how easy it is to make - just melt some butter and chocolate and stir the rest of the ingredients into it. The most time consuming bit is probably lining the tin!

I loved this cake, as did my colleagues, but because I loved it so much, they got rather less of it than they might have done! One of the things I like most about it is that it's almost brownie-like in texture - really dense and sticky and chewy (I suppose that's down to the quantity of sugar in the recipe) and the contrast between the sticky top and the dense cake is divine. I also loved the way that you could tast the raspberries and blackcurrants against the chocolate, and the little bursts of blackcurrant from the jam. The bitter chocolate (70%) perfectly offset the sweetness from the jam and sugar. I will be making this again (can you tell I'm really keen on it?!?), but next time I might use all blackcurrant jam.

It all disappeared pretty quickly at work, with even those on diets succumbing to a piece before the day was over!

Jaffa(ish) cakes

These are the result of another of those occasions where you think 'I must make these, and I must make them soon.' And so it happens! I had been watching Something for the Weekend on BBC iPlayer on catchup, and saw Simon Rimmer (who provides the interesting cooking parts of the programme - though actually, I do enjoy the rest of it too!) making homemade Jaffa cakes. I was intruiged, partly because although I quite like Jaffa cakes I never really buy them and partly because I hadn't really given much thought to the type of recipe required for the cakey-base part of them. Turns out it's a light fatless whisked sponge. Makes sense I suppose!

The original recipe can be found here, but this is certainly an occasion that I'm glad I watched the programme too and didn't just follow the recipe. The recipe says it makes 12 and I halved the recipe (after seeing how much mixture there was on the tv show) and still made 14!!! For me, Jaffa cakes must have the correct ratio of spongy layer to jammy jelly stuff to chocolate. If you follow his recipe your cake layer will be much thicker than mine, and I think it would have been disproportionate. I was pleased with the way my cakes turned out and thought they were the perfect thickness for jaffa cakes.

I did decide to cheat a little though - I didn't have time to make the proper jelly filling to make them more authentic, so decided to just go with marmalade on its own. I then decided to try blackcurrant jam too, rebel that I am!



Homemade Jaffa Cakes
Ingredients
For the cake base:
2 large eggs
50g caster sugar
50g plain flour, sieved
butter, for greasing

For topping:
Jam/marmalade of your choice (I think I probably used about 4 tbsp for all 14, but depends how much you like, of course)
100g plain chocolate (I used Lindt 70%), melted

Method:
- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Grease your tins well - I did, and my cakes still stuck slightly! I used a 12 hole non-stick muffin tin, plus two silicone muffin moulds, because I had too much mixture.
- Suspend a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water (although I used just boiled and allowed it to cool as I was working - my hob is too far from a plug socket to do anything else!) without allowing it to touch the water. Add the sugar and eggs to the bowl and beat continuously for 4-5 minutes until the mixture is pale, fluffy and well combined.
- Add the flour, beating continuously, until a thick smooth batter forms.
- Pour into the greased muffin tin until they reach the height of base you want - I don't think the mixture puffs up very much in the oven.
- Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until pale golden-brown and cooked through (a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean). Mine took longer than this.
- Remove from the oven and set aside, still in the tins until cool. When cool, loosen and remove. I needed to carefully run a knife around the edges of the cakes to release them.

I found that my cakes had created a natural dip on their lower sides, so I just filled this with jam/marmalade. I did half of mine orange marmalade and half blackcurrant jam. Carefully pour over the melted chocolate to cover the jam and allow to set. I stored mine in the fridge (hence the condensation on the pictures) because I made them a couple of weeks ago when it was really hot. This had the advantage of a lovely crispy chocolate layer contrasting with the soft cakey layer. Mmmmm.

I would recommend using silicone bakeware if you have it - the two 'overflow' cakes baked in the silicone muffin moulds turned out perfectly without sticking at all, whereas the others did stick to the tin slightly, but not enough to prevent them being released.

You can see from the picture below that using jam rather than jelly leads to a little jam weeping into the sponge, but this didn't spoil the taste at all.


I think these were a resounding success! The blackcurrant was a more subtle flavour than the marmalade, but still very nice indeed. The marmalade jaffa cakes were lovely - bitter chocolate, soft cake and a lovely bitter sweet marmalade filling too.

As one colleague put it - the sponge isn't stale, the orange flavour is stronger and there's more, better tasting chocolate on them. So a success on all fronts I'd say! Do try them, they really are very good and not too much hassle for the flavour! Thanks Simon!!!

Marmalade cake

As often happens I had eggs to use up and having seen this recipe for marmalade cake, fancied giving it a try. Marmalade was already in the store cupboard so a very spur of the moment recipe. I only had two eggs, but they were huge ones, so I decided to weigh them and adapt the recipe to suit, after all it's a basic victoria sponge mix! (Not something you'll often find me saying - I tend to stick to recipes verbatim!)
I took it into work, where it was promptly devoured, so although I didn't get a piece, I'm assuming it was good!

Marmalade Cake

2 very large eggs (mine were 75g each)
150g self raising flour
150g sugar
150g soft butter
75g orange marmalade

Preheat oven to 175C/Gas 3-4 (this was a little slapdash!). Grease and base line (with baking parchment) a 2lb loaf tin. Weigh the marmalade into a pan and heat very gently, squishing any lumps, to help it blend evenly with the rest of the ingredients later. Weigh sugar and butter into a bowl, beat until pale and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating them in well. Add flour and fold in, followed by marmalade. Mix well to ensure even marmalade distribution and spoon into prepared tin.
Place in oven and bake for around 50-55 minutes until golden brown and springy when gently touched. (Or check with a cocktail stick for stickiness if you're not sure - it should come out clean.)
When cooked, remove from oven, leave to cool for 10 minutes or so, then turn out carefully onto a wire cooling rack, removing the baking parchment as you do so.
I didn't bother with the orange rind but I suppose it would have enhanced the flavour further. I also didn't bother with icing, partly because it looked nice and moist anyway and because icing makes cutting it for work difficult and messy (and I was in a hurry because I should have been revising!).