Esther's Orange Marmalade Layer Cake

This month for the No Waste Food Challenge Kate from Turquoise Lemons has challenged us to use up any leftover preserves we have lurking in the refrigerator. I immediately thought of the half jar of homemade marmalade I had picked up at a pop-up Farmer's Market in town back in December. The other half of the jar was used to make some delightful Christmas Granola Breakfast Muffins back in mid-December, and the remainder of the jar as been ignored, unloved, in the refrigerator ever since. None of us are big marmalade fans, preferring the sweetness of a red berry jam on our toast instead.

So, Kate's challenge was a perfect opportunity to free up some fridge space. I had some whipping cream which was going to be out of date shortly too so I Googled the ingredients: marmalade + whipping cream. The search results came up with a fantastic blog post by Talk of the House for Esther's Orange Marmalade Layer Cake. Perfect, especially since the Alphabakes challenge, hosted this month by The More Than Occasional Baker (and alternately hosted by Caroline Makes), has challenged us to cook something with 'E' in the title or ingredients list.

This cake features in the Mitford series of books written by Jan Karon. Initially there was no recipe for the cake itself, but Victoria magazine and southern chef Scott Peacock joined forces and developed one. I've never read the books (nor am I likely to, they are not my preferred genre of reading) but  still, the cake itself is quite nice indeed and I like the fact I've made a cake which is almost a book character as it appears in nearly every book in the series.

I followed the instructions on the blog post to make a double layered cake sandwiched together with marmalade. The cakes themselves are quite moist due to pouring a cup of sugar-sweetened orange juice into the cake layers shortly after they come out of the oven. The frosting is fantastic - I sweetened the whipped cream with Sugar and Crumbs natural orange flavoured icing sugar before whipping in soured cream (I'm a big fan of soured cream so this really appealed to me). The cake is then finished off with a generous spreading of marmalade on the top.


The cake looks impressive, I think, especially since I borrowed a gorgeous Richard Ginori cake stand from a friend to serve it on.  I made the cake to serve at a fortnightly craft group I was hosting and it went down really well. We all put down our knitting and crochet and quickly devoured most of the cake.

I have to confess to not being a fan of refrigerated sponge cakes. I find the cool, dense texture rather unappealing, preferring a room-temperature lighter crumb. However, since this cake has a whipped cream frosting it has to be refrigerated. The recipe itself calls for the cake to be chilled for at least two hours before serving. Still, it wasn't a bad cake and I did eat a few slices of it. It wasn't an unpleasant way to use up some leftover marmalade.

Update: I have since added this blog post to a blogging challenge called Novel Food, hosted by Simona at Briciole, which is a round up of recipes which feature in literary works.