Citrus fusion: an orange marmalade cake with lemon glacé icing

I've made this orange cake before but I've never combined it with lemon glacé icing before. It turned out to be the perfect combination. The cake is dense, rich and syrupy, and the tangy, thin icing cuts through the richness perfectly.

I decorated it with a few fondant flowers. This is a simple, plain sort of cake, and you don't want to get too fancy with the decoration. A few flowers are fine.

This recipe is very simple:

Ingredients:
3 eggs
100g ground almonds
50g caster sugar
1 tsp baking powder
175g orange marmalade

Preheat oven to 180C and grease a loaf tin. Beat the eggs with an electric beater for five minutes, until they are thick and creamy.

Then add all the dry ingredients and the marmalade, and fold through the egg mixture until well combined.

You should end up with a foamy, loose mixture. Pour into the tin and put into the oven immediately. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until a skewer stuck into the centre comes out clean. If the cake starts to brown too much on top before being ready, cover its top with foil and reduce the oven heat a little.

The cake will rise, then sink in the middle - to get a flat top on the cake, reverse it when taking it out of the tin.

Glacé icing:

200g icing sugar
1 -2 tblsp lemon juice
lemon zest (if desired)

Mix the juice in with the icing sugar and stir until smooth. Adjust for desired thickness/runniness by adding more juice or more sugar.

When cake is cold, dollop the icing onto the cake and smooth it out with a spatula. I like mine to run down the sides of the cake in some droplets and look a little home-made and rustic - use lots of icing for this look.

For the fondant flowers, if using, you'll need some coloured fondant, a small rolling pin and some flower shaped cutters.

Roll out a small piece of fondant, using cornflour to prevent it sticking. Stamp the fondant with the cutters, then add a cachou to the centre of each flower, fixing it with a drop of water.

Once made, these flowers will last for months in an airtight container. Make sure they're completely dry before sealing the container, though, or the flowers may go soft.

A small amount of fondant will make lots of flowers, so it's worthwhile doing a big batch once in a while and keeping them for use in decorating.

That's it for the orange marmalade cake - good luck and happy eating from Dr Cupcake!