Marmalade

I thought I’d missed the Seville orange season, which only lasts for a couple of weeks and starts around the end of January. I’d gone to the market in Cambridge last week, only to find they’d run out. Happily, another box turned up on Saturday, so I snapped up a couple of kilos.

Seville oranges are an unprepossessing fruit, knobbly and scarred-looking, and very puny when held beside the majestic, sterile, navel oranges in the next crate. But Sevilles sell out quickly for a reason. They don’t just make gloriously bitter, perfumed marmalade; they’re also a wonderful addition to recipes anywhere you might use a lemon, with their tart, fragrant juice.

Making your own marmalade is time-consuming; you’ll need to set the best part of a day aside for the project. It’s worth the effort, though – and my realisation that 14 jars of amber, jewelled preserves only cost me £7 (£3 for the oranges, £4 for the sugar) has left me full of self-righteousness. It’s also a great pleasure to be able to manage the recipe yourself so you can produce your preferred thickness of peel and syrupyness. I like a dense, thick-cut marmalade, of the sort that you just don’t seem to be able to buy these days. (So does my lovely Dad, whose name is on several of these jars.) A home-made marmalade, as you’ll know if you’ve ever had one, is much, much tastier than the shop-bought version. I am a purist when it comes to marmalade, and believe it tastes its best when it’s made with Seville oranges, sugar and nothing else. You’ll find no additions of grapefruit, whisky or ginger here – if you want whisky with your marmalade, pour yourself an accompanying glass.

Two kilos of fruit will produce about 14 jars of marmalade. Split the mixture between large pans if you don’t have a big jam pan (if you make a lot of preserves, a jam pan is a worthwhile investment). You’ll need:

2kg Seville oranges
3.5 litres water
4kg sugar

Get out your jam pan, and simmer the oranges in the water for 2 hours with a lid on. Remove the fruit from the liquid and slice the oranges in half. Use a fork (and a friend with a fork if you want to get this done quickly, because this is a somewhat tiresome job) to remove the seeds from the centre and put them in a bowl. Put the now seedless pulp from the oranges in another bowl with any juice.

Put all the seeds in a small pan, cover with water and boil vigorously to release the pectin in them for ten minutes while you prepare the skin.

You’ll be left with a pile of orange-skin shells. Chop them by hand to your preferred width – some prefer a very finely shredded peel. I like whokking great chunks. Combine the chopped peel with the pulp and put it all back in the water you simmered the whole oranges in with the sugar. Strain the seeds out of the little pan and add the resulting liquid to the marmalade.

Bring the marmalade, stirring initially to dissolve the sugar, to a rolling boil, with the lid off. After 15 minutes, dollop a teaspoon onto a cold saucer. Blow on it until it is cool and give it a poke with a finger to test the set. It probably won’t be ready yet – you’re looking for a wrinkly surface skin and a lovely amber colour. Test every 15 minutes. When you judge the set to be right (50 minutes/1 hour usually seems to be about right for a thick cut; shredded skin will come ready earlier) remove the pan from the heat, skim any scum off with a slotted spoon to prevent cloudiness, and pour into sterilised jam jars.

Sticky orange and almond cake

This is just great for winter – a great blast of sunny orange flavour, but rather than coming from a delicious healthy glass of juice, it’s mediated through a sugary cake, made amazingly moist and dense with ground almonds. Stodge is a very important mood-lifter in the dark evenings of December.

If you have visitors this Christmas who don’t like Christmas pudding or Christmas cake, this is a very good alternative. It’s rich, heavy and very luxurious in mouth-feel, and while a spoonful of brandy butter or a slug of cream might feel like overkill, it’d be a pretty handsome variety of overkill. If you do plan on making this for Christmas and want to kick it up a level, add three tablespoons of Cointreau or another orange liqueur to the orange juice you pour over at the end, when the cake comes out of the oven. Do not use Blue Curaçao, for obvious reasons.

You’ll need:

250g salted butter, softened
225g caster sugar
4 eggs
50g plain flour
200g ground almonds
1 teaspoon almond essence
Zest and juice of 2 oranges
2 tablespoons icing sugar

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Grease and line a springform tin.

Cream the butter and sugar together until they are pale and fluffy. (You really do need an electric mixer for this recipe, I’m afraid.) Beat the eggs and add them a tablespoon at a time to the butter and sugar mixture along with a tablespoon of flour, whisking as you go and adding more until the last batch is incorporated.

Fold the ground almonds into the batter and add the juice of 1 orange, the zest from both oranges and the almond essence. Stir the liquid ingredients gently and use a spatula to move the cake mixture into the prepared tin.

Bake for 1 hour, checking halfway through to make sure the cake isn’t browning too quickly (if it is, just put a tinfoil hat on it). The cake will leave a toothpick pushed into the centre clean when it’s ready. Remove from the heat, sprinkle over the icing sugar and poke little holes all over the top of the cake. Strain the juice from the remaining orange to get rid of any pulpy bits and spoon it evenly all over the surface of the cake. Cool in the tin for 20 minutes, remove to a rack and when completely cool, wrap carefully for a few hours before serving to allow the flavours to meld and the stickiness to reach a lovely peak.

Chocolate orange fairy cakes

I eat precisely one Terry’s Chocolate Orange every year, at Christmas. Here, for non-festive times of year, is the same thing in cake form.

There will be no post here on Monday; it’s a Bank Holiday, and I shall be spending the day on a boat.

To make 16 little cakes, you’ll need:

Cake
100g soft butter
100g caster sugar
2 eggs
100g self-raising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
Grated zest of 1 oranges

Icing
75g dark chocolate (I used Hotel Chocolat’s amazing 100% cocoa solids bar from the Purist range)
50g butter
75ml double cream
Grated zest of 1 orange

Preheat the oven to 200° C. Beat all the cake ingredients together with an electric whisk until the mixture is pale, light and fluffy. Divide it between 16 paper cake cases and bake for 20-25 minutes until the cakes are pale gold in colour, and a toothpick inserted into the centre of one comes out clean. Set the cakes to cool on a rack while you make the icing.

Melt the butter and chocolate together in a bowl over some boiling water. Stir in the orange zest and a tablespoon of the cold cream, and begin to beat with the electric whisk on medium. Pour in the cream in a thin stream as you beat, and when all the cream is incorporated, continue to beat air into the chocolate until the mixture is pale, spreadable and light.

Spread the icing over the cooled cakes with a knife (or, if you don’t hate washing up, pipe it on). These cakes keep well in an airtight container for a few days.

Sangria

I know plenty of books and Internet commentators will tell you strictly that you should only ever cook or mix cocktails with wines you would be happy to drink on their own. I thumb my (adorable button) nose at them. I’ve made this sangria twice in the last week with two different £3 bottles of Rioja, and I can assure you that using a more expensive bottle will simply be a waste of money – I cringe to imagine you stirring orange juice and sugar into a really good wine. On the other hand, it is worth buying a good lemonade for this drink (lemon soda like Sprite for Americans, not the fresh stuff). I like Schweppes.

You should make and drink your sangria in the same evening. If it hangs around for more than a few hours, the wine can oxidise and sour. The evening you make it, though, your sangria will be delicious: it’s a drink full of sunshine and goes very well with some salsa music and tapas.

To make 2 l of sangria, you’ll need:

1 bottle Rioja
3 large, juicy oranges
2 tablespoons caster sugar
1 lime
1 apple
1 small wineglass brandy
Lemonade
Ice

You’ll need a 2 l jug, preferably with a wide neck, to mix this in.

Dissolve the sugar in the juice of two of the oranges in the bottom of the jug. Slice the remaining orange, skin and all, into thick pieces with the lime and the cored apple, and drop them into the jug. Pour over the bottle of wine and the brandy, then add a large handful of ice and carefully fill the jug to the top with lemonade. Stir and serve immediately.