No 45 - Upside Down Citrus Cake

'Birds on Bikes', a group of local women, had their annual tour of the Hayling Art Trail last weekend.  It was followed by a meal and social gathering at the large and very welcoming home of one of the organizers of Birds on Bikes.  The invitation to join them was accepted with delight, and as the main course was to be curry, I had no problem deciding what to make to contribute to deserts; there are still jars of my unset marmalade lurking on my top shelf.... 

So in addition to the Lime Marmalade Cheesecake (see No 36), I made this marmalade cake with oranges and lime marmalade.  (Lime so goes with curry.)  This looks like the sort of thing that could easily weld itself to a baking tin, so I hauled out the silicon bakeware.  

(I hate this stuff, it's rubbish for cooking a Christmas cake in, but for cakes that weld to the tin, this turned out to be just the ticket.)   This is a 23cm cake pan.   If you want a deeper cake use a smaller pan.

Upside Down Citrus & Marmalade Cake

Grease the bottom and sides of the cake pan with a heavy layer of unsalted butter.  Sprinkle in 2 tablespoons of demerrara sugar and arrange thinly sliced oranges in there.

Pre-heat the oven at 180 degrees C.

Cream 200 grams of unsalted butter & 200 grams of golden caster sugar until it is the colour of french vanila ice-cream.

Beat in 4 large eggs, 1 at a time with lots of beating in between.

Add the zest and juice of an orange and zest off a lemon, and 3 generous tablespoons of lime marmalade.

More beating.

Fold in 200 grams of self-raising flour and 50 grams of ground almonds.

Dollop the mix on top of the arranged orange slices, swipe your spatula round the top a bit to even it out, and bake it for about half an hour (in your pre-heated oven).

When it has cooled a bit, tip it onto the serving plate and dress the top with 3-4 tablespoons of marmlade.  Your marmalade won't be an unset disaster like mine so you might need to warm it up first to make it runny.

Et voila...

....marmalade cake

Sorry about the pink cake-carrying understorey.  That colour combination was just so 'in-your-face' I had to photograph it like that.

And the astute among you will have noticed that the photgraphs are two different cakes - of course they are; one of them had to come to work to count for the blog.

No 13 - Citrus Muffins

Citrus Muffins

Mum sent this recipe over a couple of years ago.  I’ve no idea where she got it from but it amused me because her enthusiasm for it indicates she must have finally got herself a food processor.

She apparently makes lemon ones.  I haven’t tried lemon yet but the orange, tangerine or mandarin ones are fabulous – fabulously easy, fabulously moist and tasty.  Rare for a muffin recipe, these are still moist and palatable on the second day after they were made, but there are seldom any left at the end of day one.

200g citrus (skin and all)

1 c sugar

 Blend these together in the food processor.

Add

1 large egg

½ cup of milk and blend thoroughly.

Sift together 1½ cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda and gently pulse these dry ingredients into the wet mix until just mixed.

Lastly mix in 100g melted butter

Bake in well greased muffin pans (12 standard size) or cupcake papers,  20 minutes at 170 -180C.

Citrus Muffins