Citrus cake with marmalade

Some days just call for cake. I don't even eat a lot of cake but I needed to make some anyway. Especially when I see a recipe where I already have everything I need! This was the case with Rachel Khoo's Quatre-quarts aux agrumes, or citrus fruit cake. I had everything except the orange zest. In place of that I had a jar of Maggies Place thick cut 4 fruits marmalade, that I got from my Urban Locavore box. 

This can become something. I think.

It totally did.

A buttery, sweet cake, covered in the contrasting marmalade, which has a touch of sweetness finished off with a kick of bitter orange and a citrus tang! This is a very adult bake, as it is not completely sweet, but sweet enough to know it's cake. To keep it sweet, make a sugar syrup with lemon and rosemary and drown the cake in that instead of the marmalade. Heaven.

I took this to Carolanne's Kitchens 2nd birthday celebrations (I kinda cake crashed! Who brings cake to a birthday party!?) and was happy to see most of it gone! 

Recipe inspired by Rachel Khoo's Quatre-quarts aux agrumes.

Ingredients
4 eggs
250g golden caster sugar
250g plain flour
a pinch of salt
finely grated zest of a lemon + juice
1 tsp baking powder
250g butter, melted and cooled
1 jar of Maggies Place thick cut 4 fruit marmalade (or any brand that is your fave!)

Method
1) Preheat oven to 180C, and prepare your baking tin (original recipe calls for a loaf tin but I used a bundt).

2) Seperate the eggs and in one bowl beat the whites with half the sugar to form soft peaks, in the other bowl, beat the egg yolks with the other half of the sugar, until thick and pale.

3) Gently combine the flour, salt, zest, juice and baking powder with the egg yolk mix and then slowly add the melted butter.

4) Add the egg whites carefully, folding them into the mix until combined.
5) Pour the batter into the prepared tin and bake for 50-60 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.

6) Leave the cake to cool in the tin, when it has cooled enough to take it out of the tin, heat your marmalade gently on the stove until it has become pouring consistency. 

7) Prick holes all over the top of your cake, then pour over the marmalade. 

NB The original recipe says the cake cooks in 35-40 minutes, however mine was not NEARLY done by then, and it needed an additional 25-30 minutes. You'll have to use your judgement here, and just keep checking your cake after its been in the oven 40 minutes.

Basil infused lemon ice cream

We have a lot of basil in our garden, somehow this year I've managed to grow more of it than I normally use (there seems to be forever a jar of pesto in the fridge!), which just means that I've become a bit more creative in how I use it, or (most of the time) just throw it into dishes more often. It added an extra dimension to a stir fry of thinly sliced kangaroo (marinated briefly in soy, sambal oelek and garlic), mushrooms, a red pepper from the garden and jasmine rice - its stronger aniseed notes went really well with the asian flavours in the wok. It was such a simple delicious dinner, I'm no longer bound by Italian cooking when thinking of how to use my basil! I have purple basil as well, but tend to use the green basil more often purely because I have more of it, it's thrived where the purple basil has been much more subdued (though its a very pretty addition to any garden!).

The creation of a new ice cream flavour follows a pattern in my house. I have full cream milk and cream in my fridge for some reason (which I dont normally have - usually hilo and NO cream!), and there will be some pantry items or fruit which need using. This time I had a lemon, and this worked nicely with the theme for this months Sweet Adventures Blog Hop being lemons! I assumed there would be many lemony cakes, curds and tarts so I didn't want to go down that road. Ice cream it would be! I then had a thought of including basil in with the lemon - I must have seen it somewhere before and subconsciously remembered it, but I thought that would be something a little different!

What I ended up with was a really interesting flavoured ice cream, totally delicious! You get hints of lemon and basil, but together they almost taste a bit like spearmint! It was not a sweet ice cream but really refreshing, definitely for use as a palate cleanser, or a light after dinner treat. I think this would be fabulous as a sorbet, you could get alot more sharpness of lemon into the mix then (I was too worried about the mixture curdling - I wasn't keen on making cheese!).

Heres how I did it... note that normally I would use more cream, but I ended up having equal quantities of both. For a creamier ice cream use more, or all cream.

Ingredients

350ml cream

350ml full fat milk

1/4 cup sugar

1 egg (or 2 really small ones)

zest of 1 lemon

Tops of 3 or 4 basil bunches

Method

1) Put the cream, milk, basil and lemon rind into a saucepan to warm up - don't bring to the boil.

2) Beat the sugar and egg together until pale and ribbony.

3) Pour a spoonful of the warm milk/cream mixture into the eggs and incorporate well, then start pouring the rest in, beating the whole time (you don't want the eggs to scramble!).

4) With a slotted spoon, discard the basil and lemon zest, and pour into your ice cream machine and churn until its thickened. If you want soft serve style ice cream then serve this now! I found that the mixture was slightly grainy/icy and would have benefited from being whipped in the mixer, however it was about 11:30pm and I wasn't feeling like it!

5) Pour into covered containers and freeze until you're ready to use them!

Its worth noting that, upon speaking to others who make ice cream, it is harder when you get it from the freezer than store bought stuff. You just have to take it out of the freezer 10 minutes before you want to eat it, and not forget about it!