Orange Marmalade Fruit Cake

My favourite way of using homemade marmalade is to bake it into this simple orange marmalade fruit loaf cake. Much lighter and less sweet than traditional fruit cake.

The best thing about ‘all in one’ recipes is that they are fault – prove. You would really need to try hard to get this type of cake wrong! It’s handy that you only need just one bowl for mixing, and there is no need to faff around with mixer or other specialist baking equipment.

All you need to do is to gradually add all the ingredients, mix it well as you go, stick it in a tin and bake!

My marmalade fruit cake is precisely this kind of simple recipe. It’s also delicious and moist cake with just the right amount of fruit in it. 

I have to say, I’m not a great fan of traditional fruit cakes. They are way too sweet and sticky for my liking, but this cake is something completely different. The twist comes in a form of adding Seville Orange Marmalade and cinnamon spice and drastically reducing the amount of dry fruit in the cake (like from 350g to 100g).

Few notes on ingredients

Flour

I’ve used plain flour with baking powder, but if you only have self-raising flour, it’s O.K to use that too. Use the same amount of self-raising flour as the plain flour in the recipe, but leave out the baking powder.

Sugar

I also like that you can also make variations of this cake. Depending on what type of sugar you use, you will end up with a slightly different cake. The darker the sugar is, the deeper the flavour is going to be (and the cake will be also slightly darker in colour).

Butter

In the past, I’ve tried to replace the butter with other fats (like a spreadable butter or margarine), but to be honest, it’s not worth it! Butter is butter, and you can’t replace the flavour! If you don’t have unsalted butter, just use salted butter, but don’t add the pinch of salt into your cake mix.

Cinnamon

You can use cinnamon or mixed spice which work great with the orange flavour

Sultanas

I prefer seedless sultanas or golden seedless sultanas, which are a little bigger and also don’t have any pips. If you wanted to you can soak them overnight in orange juice or brandy!

Milk

As for the milk, you can use pretty much anything you have at hand. I tend to use semi-skimmed milk, but you can use dairy-free milk or full-fat, it really doesn’t matter much.

The flavour of the other ingredients will overpower the taste of the milk (if you are, for example, using soya milk). The milk is there just as a binding ingredient.

Seville orange marmalade

I usually make my own Seville Orange Marmalade and then use it in my cake, but you can, of course, use shop-bought one or any other marmalade made from Seville Orange substitutes, such as lemons, limes, tangerines or sweet oranges.

One of the reasons why I started to bake this recipe, is because I had copious amounts of marmalade and I was looking for a recipe that would use marmalade as one of the ingredients.

Every time I bake this marmalade fruit cake I tend to add more marmalade in it to see how far I can take it, but I’ve noticed that I need to adjust the other wet ingredients to make sure that the recipe is not too wet and ends up underbaked. 

How to make this easy orange marmalade fruit cake recipe

Preheat the oven to 170 C / Gas mark 3.

Grease and line a 2 pound loaf cake tin with baking parchment.

In a bowl, beat together the sugar and the unsalted butter until pale and fluffy.

Beat in the eggs and mix until creamy.

Fold in the flour with baking powder.

Add the remainder of the ingredients and mix well.

Transfer the mixture to the prepared loaf cake tin and smooth the top.

Bake in the preheated oven for 35 -40 min, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Remove from the oven, place on the cooling rack and allow to cool in the tin.

Once cooled, remove from the tin and enjoy.

Extra tip

To add extra orange flavour to your marmalade loaf cake, warm up 2 tablespoons of orange marmalade and spoon it over the hot cake when you first take it out of the oven.

The warm marmalade will evaporate and seep into the cake leaving you with an extra orange drizzle on top of your cake.

How to store your marmalade cake

This is slightly dense/compact cake, which will keep well for several days.

If you want to keep your cake for longer, I’d freeze it on the day you bake it and use within 3-6 months. Defrost overnight in a loosely closed plastic bag and your marmalade loaf cake will stay nice and moist.

Why not stay in touch…

I hope you enjoy making this recipe and if you do, I’d love to know what you think! Let me know in the comments below or find me on Instagram or Facebook and add the hashtag #cocoaandheart so that I can see your post.

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Magdalena