Marmalade and cake
- Mar 19
- 5 min read
"In my book, a cake stands or falls by how moist it is. Dry cake is fit only for trifle." Nigel Slater
I don't really know why I'm writing about marmalade cake. Our marmalade stocks are low, so I don't think I shall be wasting it on cake - well David would see it as wasting. Or bread and butter pudding, mousse, soufflé, tart - or indeed any other dessert that involves marmalade. But this particular version - Breton butter cake with marmalade from Helen Goh in The Guardian caught my eye a while back - well it was really the Breton butter cake thing, because I thought that might be a suitable post. A traditional thing updated. So it got into my Ideas list, that I am trying to work through and tackle all those things that I thought were good ideas at the time, but which I have not been brave enough to tackle since.
And yes I have had a quick look at Breton butter cake which looks like this - you can see that Helen Goh has stuck to the traditional criss-cross pattern on the top - but marmalade is not a feature of it. That would be the butter. However I don't think I shall say any more about it today. It has its own story. Consider it a starting point for all - well not all I'm sure - that you can do with marmalade and cake. Which, of course leads us to the British - who sort of 'own' marmalade, and who adore cakes.
The challenge is to think of something to say other than here is a list of lovely cakes that you could have a go at if you feel like cake or are expecting visitors.
I guess one thing to say is that using marmalade in a cake is a quick way to infuse your cake with the flavour of orange - a touch of bitterness to offset the generally overwhelming sugariness of cake. When I make cake - which is not very often - I am often alarmed at how much sugar goes into them. Although marmalade too contains oodles of sugar, or it wouldn't set. It's the rind that gives the bitterness - or the Seville oranges - if you can find any. They are a disappearing thing it seems to me.
I'm with Nigel on the moist versus dry aspect of cakes. I'm not a huge fan of sponge cakes or pound cakes. They are, as he says, better suited to trifle. The cakes I feel more confident in making than those are the ones that contain some kind of fruit that always adds that moistness as well as more flavour. He has more to say on this:
"The cakes you make at home are always so much more interesting than the ones you can buy from even the smartest patisserie. This is not simply a matter of ingredients, but it is very much down to the wobbly factor - the old-fashioned charm that will always be lacking in any food that is too perfect, too symmetrical, too professional." Nigel Slater
And I certainly know about the wobbly factor - my cakes are often too wobbly in the middle and crusty on the outside. And certainly not immaculately iced and decorated.
The other thing with a post like this is that I am often impressed with the creativity of all those bakers out there, who can do so many different things with the same fundamental ingredients - in this case, flour, sugar, marmalade and butter, possibly eggs.
Another reason for starting on this is the coincidence factor in the form of the Handwritten post that I wrote recently about handwritten recipes and notes in cookbooks, which had been inspired by Rachel Roddy and her marmalade cake, the recipe for which she had found one day. A different topic, but one featuring a traditional - but moist looking - marmalade cake. It had reminded me of the Helen Goh recipe - and so here we are, on a dull and dreary day trying to warm the soul with images of, and thoughts of, marmalade cakes. So what did I find?
A variety - admittedly mostly from my normal sources although I did look at Mary Berry - boring - and Sally's Baking Addiction - whose addiictions didn't stretch to marmalade. And then I thought I should check Google Images - sometimes a more satisfying a source than Google itself - where I found two more: Marmalade cake - Jane Curran/Woman and Home - which is a carrot cake with a marmalade syrup and a butter marmalade filling and Chocolate orange marmalade loaf - Cook Republic, which is actually perhaps like this Hazelnut and marmalade brownie - Coles/Taste
I'm not sure about the chocolate pair, but orange, particularly bitter orange does go well with chocolate.
So here I go with my list - starting with the relatively 'ordinary': Marmalade cake - Jamie Oliver; Frosted marmalade cake - Nigel Slater - the picture is from Zeb Bakes - just one of many who have made this and Sticky orange marmalade cake - Not Just Spice - the only relatively unknown website contribution.
Leading on from that last 'sticky' version there are a few more slight variations that lean towards the 'sticky - Orange and polenta syrup cake - Michelle Southan/Taste; Olive oil and marmalade cake - Australian Women's Weekly; Pear and Seville marmalade cake - Australian Women's Weekly
Two upside-down cakes - Marmalade breadcrumb cake - Benjamine Ebuehi and Yotam Ottolenghi's Upside-down date cake with marmalade although technically speaking he doesn't qualify as he sort of makes the marmalade specifically for the cake:
Two that are a bit like fruit cakes - Marmalade tea cake - Annette Forest/Taste and Date and marmalade Christmas cake - Nigella Lawson
Two that are more like a British pudding than cake - Perfect marmalade sponge - Felicity Cloake and Marmalade pudding cake - Nigella Lawson
And , finally, the outliers: Little chocolate orange cakes - Nigel Slater; Marmalade roly poly - Jamie Oliver/delicious. and Tea and toast cheesecake - Aiofe Noonan/delicious.
Of course I have not looked at any of my cookbooks for this post. In days gone by - long ago days now - I would have had no other choice, and there might not have been any pictures either. Many of those internet recipes come from books and magazines of course, but many of them don't - and here I thought of TikTok - and look what I found. from a lady called georginaaelizabeth. I suppose it's not cake, so doesn't really qualify but sort of wow. And there's no recipe in the sense that the quantities are missing. There's a video however, so if you are any good at this kind of stuff you might be able to glean enough to have a go. Or find a similar recipe. I bet there is one somewhere.
There's an overwhelming world of ideas out there. So many, that it almost has the effect of putting you off making the choice and then following through by making something. The opposite of what they are all trying to do of course.
But as I said at the beginning, we are low on our home-made quality marmalade - all those recipes stressed using quality marmalade, So over to you.
YEARS GONE BY
March 19
2025 - French village moments
2023 - Bostock
2022 - A ladies lunch in the city - it must be that time of year
2021 - Missing
2020 - Missing
2017 - Nut roast surprise
Ah Marmalade the taste that saved a nation. (WWII) 🤪