Mmmm, cake...

At this time of year most people seem to be making an effort to eat healthily and exercise, but I've decided that cake is a January requirement, what with the cold and the snow. And I always feel better about eating it when I've made it from scratch myself.

This weekend I had some dark chocolate to use, so flipped through the Chocolate section of Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess and settled on the Store Cupboard Chocolate Orange Cake, mainly because it looked so easy.

And it was. You just need to melt down the butter, then mix everything else into it and hey presto, you've got your cake batter. I used Bonne Maman's Three Fruit Marmalade, which gave the cake just a hint of citrus, so don't fear this if you're not a marmalade fan. I'd definitely try this again with a raspberry or cherry jam either. Or maybe apricot.

Keep an eye on this in the oven if you try it, at 50 minutes it was just beginning to look a wee bit overdone on top, but it turned out fine. It might look a bit dry in my photo, but it actually has a nicely balanced texture and is a good cake when you don't want lots of fancy icing or anything like that.



Ingredients:

125g of unsalted butter
100g of dark chocolate
300g of good quality orange marmalade
150g of sugar
a pinch of salt
2 large eggs
150g of self-rising flour

Melt the butter slowly in a heavy-bottom saucepan. When it's almost melted, add chocolate pieces, stir and take off the heat. Stir with a wooden spoon, until chocolate has melted.

Add the marmalade, sugar, salt and eggs. Stir thoroughly (it's okay to leave small visible chunks of marmalade in the batter).

Add sifted flour, stir and pour into a buttered and floured 20-22 cm loose bottomed cake tin or 2lb loaf tin.

Bake at 180˚C/350.F/Gas 4 oven for 45-50 minutes, until the cake has set (test with a knife or wooden stick). Leave to cool in the tin for about 10 minutes and transfer to a cooling rack.