Yo Joe

A Maderia is the best kind of cake. It’s sweet and dense but so moist, it keeps for ages and you can slice and eat it like bread. It’s the thick sugar icing that makes me want to eat this cake all of everyday. Coloured pink from the blood oranges, its sweet but sour enough to be able to eat it on it’s own with a spoon. Paired with the mellow and buttery orange cake its peng. A traditional Madeira cake has equal parts butter and sugar, I’ve put more butter in which makes the cake hold together better when sliced and makes it stay moist for longer.

This is a really easy cake, it’ll make your kitchen smell of sweet orange and it’s pink. Great!

Ingredients

• 200g softened butter
• 175g caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Pinch of salt
• Zest of 2 small blood oranges
• 225g self raising flour

For the icing

• 100g icing sugar
• Juice of blood orange and a splash of milk, added to the consistency you like.

Method

Pre heat the oven to 170, 150 for a fan oven. Butter and line a loaf tin, I use a 1lb loaf tin, 20 cm x 10cm x 6cm.

Cream the butter and sugar together until light, fluffy and pale in colour. Add the eggs, vanilla, salt, and orange zest. Cream until fluffy and pale in colour again.

Sift and then fold in the flour, pour into the loaf tin and bake for 55 mins to an hour, or until a knife inserted into the cake comes out clean.

While the cake is cooling make the icing. Sift the icing sugar into a bowl, add a small splash of milk and a squeeze of the blood orange juice and give it a mix. Keep adding very small amounts at a time of the orange juice until you get the thickness you like.

Once the cake has cooled, pour over the icing and eat cake!

Caitlin X