This is my husband’s favourite cake.

And no wonder really- it’s intensely orange, moist and delightfully soft. The cardamom adds a touch of the exotics.

This recipe comes from Greg and Lucy Malouf’s wonderful book, Moorish- Flavours from Mecca to Marrakech. It’s also a great way to use the oranges I bought the other day to roll over the threshold to bring in prosperity for Chinese New Year.

What you need:

• 130g soft unsalted butter
• 200g caster sugar
• grated zest of 1 orange and 1 lemon
• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs, free range from happy clucking chooks, of course
• 225g plain flour
• 1 teaspoon cardamon seeds, finely ground and sieved. You can use pre-ground in need I guess…
• 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 200ml sour cream

For the syrup:

• Juice of 1 orange
• Juice of ½ lemon
• 3 tablespoons Cointreau
• 3 tablespoons caster sugar
• 6 cardamon pods, cracked
• 1 cinnamon stick

What you do with it:

• Pre-heat the oven to 170C
• Cream the butter and sugar
• Add the vanilla and zests and mix in
• Beat in the eggs, one at a time
• Sift the flour, baking powder, salt and cardamom together
• With the mixer on low speed, add the flour alternately with the sour cream
• Slap it into a tin (23cm springform cake tin) that you’ve had the forethought to grease and line in the usual way.
• Bake for 50-60 mins- until a skewer comes out clean
• Use the cake cooking time to prepare the syrup, ie bung the ingredients together into a saucepan and simmer gently for a few minutes. Strain.
• When the cake is done, pierce it all over with the skewer and pour over the syrup evenly.
• Leave it to cool completely in the tin.
• Dust with icing sugar to serve.