Marmalade cake with orange icing

My kids love going to my Nana and Granddad’s house. Yes that’s right my Nana and Granddad. I’m very lucky, as are the kids, to still have 4 generations knocking around! They have lots of animals (1 dog and 3 cats at the minute), and their house is packed to the rafters with interesting little artefacts and antiques, as well as about 50 teddies of different shapes and sizes dotted around – my daugter always comes away with one. They also love eating my Nana’s food. She makes proper, home cooked nursery dinners. “I can’t cook posh food, like you!”, she once said when I complimented her on her cooking! Well, I’ll take that as a compliment, but I definitely wouldn’t say I was a maker of posh food!

My son loves the following dishes that my Nana does so well: fish pie, a lamb ragu that I have adapted on here, shepherd’s pie… But most of all he loves her puddings – always served with lashings of custard or ice cream, or both! I have featured a version of her Eve’s pudding on here before. She passed this Marmalade cake recipe to me last time I was there, recommending that it is also delicious warmed with custard (shop bought, obviously!) on top. She was right. After a few days knocking around in the kitchen we had it for supper with plenty of custard. Arthur nearly went into a state of catatonic bliss as he was eating it. The slightly bitter edge adds a really nice note. I also added a little icing to the top, which adds an extra sugary hit and looks pretty too.

Makes: about 10-12 thick slices
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 35 minutes
Total time: 45 minutes

Ingredients: 
225g self-raising flour
115g butter, cold
85g caster sugar
Zest of 1 orange
2 eggs, beaten
3 tablespoons of marmalade
2 tablespoons of milk
Pinch of salt

To make the orange icing: 
Juice of half an orange
75g sifted icing sugar

Instructions: 

1. Preheat oven to 170C. Grease and flour (or line) a 1lb loaf tin. (To do this I lightly wipe butter all over the tin and shake flour around it). 
2. Rub the butter into the flour using either a food processor or your fingers. I made it with my daughter so we used our fingers for a change!
3. Stir in the sugar, the orange rind, add eggs, salt, marmalade and milk and combine. 
4. Pour into the cake tin. Bake for about 35-40 minutes. Test with a skewer to see when it’s done. 
5. Let it cool in the tin. Remove when you can handle it. Let it cool completely on a cake rack. 
6. When cool, you may like to ice it. Simply mix sieved icing sugar with the freshly squeezed orange juice to make a smooth icing. Spread on top. You’ll probably have too much here, but you can either spread it on slices, or simply make half the amount (as you can see, mine was too thin, as I obviously added too much juice, but it was still delicious!) 
7. Enjoy freshly sliced or warmed with custard and a large mug of builder’s tea.