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.
