semolina, coconut and orange syrup cake

I am a huge fan of Yotam Ottolenghi's recipes. He isn't scared of strong flavours, the recipes often challenge my preconceived ideas of what ingredients 'should' work together and the methods are usually fairly straight forward. What's not to love? Below is my variation on the semolina, coconut and marmalade cake that can be found in the recent book Jerusalem. I didn't really fancy the loaf shape suggested in the book so I used one 22cm spring form tin. Also, I couldn't find orange blossom water in my local shops so instead created a delicious lemon and rosewater syrup instead. I found it really worked well but feel free to stick with the original if you prefer.

Ingredients

WET:
180ml sunflower or vegetable oil
240ml orange juice (roughly two large oranges)
160g orange marmalade (fine cut or peel-free)
4 medium eggs
grated zest of 1 orange

DRY:
70g caster sugar
70g dessicated coconut
90g plain flour
180g semolina
2tbsp ground almonds
2 tsp baking powder

SYRUP:
200g caster sugar
140ml water
1 tbsp orange blossom water (or 2 tsp rosewater (or to taste) and 2 tsp lemon juice)

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/160C FAN/gas mark 4. Grease and base line your tin.
2. Mix together the wet ingredients until fully combined.
3. In a separate bowl mix together the dry ingredients then add the dry to the wet and mix thoroughly. The mixture should be quite runny.
4. Bake in the oven for around 45-60 mins or until a skewer comes out cleanly.
5. Towards the end of the cooking time combine the syrup ingredients in a small saucepan and bring to the boil over a gentle heat then remove from the heat. 
6. When the cake is cooked remove it from the oven and use a skewer to make small holes all over. Carefully pour over the warm syrup making sure you use it all. In Jerusalem they recommend brushing the syrup over and waiting for the syrup to be soaked in before repeating then continuing the process until all the syrup is used. I am far to impatient to do this but by all means feel free to do it yourself. I found with my method all the syrup got used and nothing bad happened so all is good.
7. Leave the cake to cool down a little before removing from the tins to cool completely. 
8. Serve with greek yogurt or creme fraiche, flavoured with orange blossom water if you fancy. 

homemade jaffa cupcakes

This classic starts out with a basic vanilla cupcake batter but is made special with the addition of the orange jelly and plain chocolate. I made this using smaller cake cases as I wanted a more even balance of cake, jelly and chocolate, this means you should get at least 12 from the basic mixture. Feel free however, to make the cakes in muffin cases, it will just change the balance of cake to jelly and chocolate.





Ingredients
1 quantity of vanilla cupcake batter
1 packet of orange jelly
2 tbsp marmalade
1 tsp lemon extract
squeeze lemon juice
250ml boiling water
100g good quality dark chocolate

1. Break up the packet of jelly into pieces and dissolve in the boiling water in a heat-proof jug. Once all the lumps have disappeared stir in the marmalade, lemon juice and extract. It's up to you whether you want the pieces of orange peel from the marmalade in your jelly, I chose to leave it out. Pour the jelly mixture into a shallow tray or plate so that it is around 0.5cm deep. Set to one side until set and you have completed the other stages.
2. Preheat the oven the 180C/160C Fan/350F/Gas 4 and place the paper cases in the tray. 
3. Make up the cupcake batter. Once cooked you want the cake to come just below the top of the case so that the jelly and chocolate will be contained within. When cooked set to one side until completely cool.
4. Next cut the jelly into discs just smaller than the top of the cupcakes. It's easiest to do this with a biscuit cutter or an upturned glass. 
5. Place each jelly disc on top of a cupcake.
6. In a heatproof bowl melt the chocolate over a pan of gently simmering water. Take care not to over heat otherwise the chocolate will go grainy.
7. Once the chocolate has melted remove from the heat and using a spoon carefully cover the top of each cupcake with a thin layer of chocolate. Take a piece of orange peel from the marmalade and place on top of the chocolate for decoration.
8. Chill the cakes until the chocolate is completely set and ready to eat.