Carrot and marmalade muffins

(a) It was a good way of using up the old scraps of marmalade before diving into our new, homemade pots. (b) You picked the recipe, out of the old Women's Weekly muffins book.

Makes 12 enormous muffins, plus about 6 small fairy-cake sized ones. You'll need:

3 medium carrots, grated
385g self-raising flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarb of soda
100g brown sugar
55g raisins or sultanas
150g marmalade, warmed up a little so it's runny
100g butter, melted
125ml milk
2 eggs

Stick the oven on at about 180 degrees C.

Sling the flour, bicarb, sugar, raisins, carrots and marmalade in a bowl. Stir well, to create an unholy mess. You loved this bit.

Beat together the butter, milk and eggs in a mixing jug. Pour into the muffin mix, and combine everything together. It'll still look horrendous.

Spoon the mix into your muffin tins/cake cases, and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes. Obviously, if you're making fairy-cake sized ones, they'll bake faster than large muffins.

Cool on a wire rack.

They're delicious warm - especially for breakfast with a little yoghurt.

Seville orange marmalade

This is one of my favourite things to make – it makes the whole house smell beautiful. It’s a fiddle (harder work than jam, that’s for sure), but *so* worth it.

Makes 4 standard marmalade-sized jars (454g each), which you’ll need to sterilise by washing in warm soapy water, and then placing in an oven on a low heat. You’ll need:

1kg oranges (I had 8)
1kg sugar
1 lemon

Wash the oranges, and then place in 2 litres of water in a large pan. Bring to the boil, and then simmer for 2 hours. Leave to cool.

Slice open each orange, and scoop out the flesh inside (try and hang onto as much of the juice as possible). You’ll also need to keep the pips.

You’ll need to slice the orange skin into whatever floats your boat marmalade-wise. You tend to like long thin strips, but I have been known to make it fairly chunky. Sling the sliced skin and any juice in a bowl, and put on one side.

Meanwhile, tip all the pips in the remaining water, and boil for 20 minutes. Strain to get the pips out. Chuck the skin/juice back in, and add the sugar. I also added another litre of water at this point, as I didn’t have much left in the pan. Gently let the sugar dissolve on a low heat.

You then need to stick a plate in the fridge. Bring the marmalade to the boil, and then continue to boil for at least 10-15 minutes. You’ll know when the marmalade is ready – take your cold plate and dollop a little mixture onto it – if you can push the mixture with your finger and the surface wrinkles, it’s done. It might take a while for the marmalade to be ready – mine took 45 minutes (I tested at 10 minute intervals).

Quickly divide up the marmalade into the jars, and put the lids on tightly.

It’s perfect on toast, but you are also quite keen on marmalade flapjack and carrot and marmalade muffins.

Grandma's marmalade cakes

Everyone felt a bit rotten this afternoon, so we made these to cheer ourselves up. You can make lots of small cakes (the mixture made enough for 12), or one large one (in which case a 7 in cake tin, or a loaf tin should do the trick).


You'll need:

8oz plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
4oz butter, softened
4oz sugar
2 eggs
2 tablespoons bitter orange marmalade (I used rhubarb and orange, which was all we had left)
grated rind of one orange

First of all, stick the oven on at 180 degrees C (all Grandma's cakes bake at that temperature). Mix the baking powder into the flour, and rub in the butter (or cheat, and do it in the food processor). Stir in the sugar - I used brown, but white caster sugar would probably produce a lighter result.

Beat the eggs and the marmalade together - this looks absolutely disgusting. Add it to the dry mixture - you should end up with a fairly stiff mix. I loosened mine with a tablespoon of milk. Stir in the orange rind, and you're good to go: spoon the mixture into small fairy-cake sized cases (of the paper or silicon variety), or into a big tin (see above).

Bake in the oven until the tops have gone golden brown, and a little bit crunchy. It'll take about 20 minutes if you do the little cakes (and keep an eye on them - you might have to turn them round, and bring them out a little earlier if your oven's fierce). A big cake will take about 1 1/4 hours.

Allow everything to cool in its tin for a 5 minutes, and then turn out onto a wire rack. They're nicest sprinkled with icing sugar, and would also be good with a blob of creme fraiche and some fruit.

Marmalade flapjacks

We made these this afternoon, in between telling fairy tales and playing with the play-doh. Your fairy tales were definitely better than mine.

This is adapted from another Dan Lepard recipe in the Guardian...

You'll need:

100g raisins
100g butter
60g dark brown sugar
75g orange and rhubarb marmalade (you could use any type, but this is what was lurking in the cupboard, courtesy of Leverington WI)
zest of an orange
1 tablespoon black treacle
200g rolled oats

Stick the raisins in a bowl, and cover with boiling water. Leave to stew for 10-15 minutes while you get on with the rest.

Turn the oven on to about 170 degrees C. Chuck the butter in a saucepan, together with the marmalade, sugar, black treacle and orange zest. Melt over a low heat.

Drain the raisins, and add to the saucepan. Ditto the oats. It'll look a right mess, but will smell lovely. Decant the mess into a square baking tin - which you've lined with greaseproof paper (otherwise it'll stick like anything).

Bake in the oven for about 25 minutes, until it's coloured slightly. Leave to cool on a wire rack (but cut into squares while it's still a little bit warm, or it'll set rock hard).