RECIPE: Seville Orange Loaf Cake from Macknade

Set a few aside from your marmalade making to make a cake with a soft, tender crumb, and a beautiful, golden yellow hue, topped with a tart Seville orange icing. Orange blossom water - typically made from Seville oranges - is added for a certain something you won’t be able to quite put your finger on in the finished cake: adding a dash is a great tip for amping up the flavour in almost any cake or bake which also uses orange zest.

Ingredients

• 175g Unsalted Butter (at room temperature)
• 175g Caster Sugar
• Zest & Juice of 1-2 Seville Oranges (plus extra zest for decoration)
• 3 Large Eggs
• ½ tsp Baking Powder
• 1 tsp Orange Blossom Water (optional)
• 175g Self Raising Flour
• 1 tbsp Boiling Water
• 100g Icing Sugar (sifted)

Instructions

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C and line a 2lb loaf pan (the larger of the two sizes) with baking parchment or a pan liner.
2. In a large mixing bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until smooth and creamy, followed by the orange zest: use just 1 orange if you like the bitter flavour of Seville oranges, 2 if you love it!
3. Beat the eggs into the mixture, one by one.
4. Follow by beating in the baking powder and orange blossom water, if using.
5. Stir in the self raising flour until you have a consistent batter, then 1 tbsp of water from the kettle to make it smooth.
6. Scrape the batter into the prepared tin and level the top. Drop it a few times down onto the worktop to knock out any air bubbles before baking for 40 minutes: the top of the cake should be golden and cracked, and a cake tester or wooden skewer inserted into the middle of the cake should come out clean. If it needs a little longer, test it every 5 minutes until it is done.
7. Cool the cake completely on a wire rack before icing, removing it from the tin as soon as it is cool enough to touch.
8. For the icing, beat 1 tsp - 3 tsp of orange juice into the icing sugar until you have a thick icing that is just pourable. Spread over the top of the cooled cake, letting it drip down the sides. Top with a little more orange zest if you have any leftover! Allow to set before slicing.

For more delicious recipes & shopping online, head to the Macknade website