Ricotta cake with marmalade

We woke up yesterday morning to a strangely nippy house. When I went down to the kitchen, I realised our boiler was flashing the F28 code, which means it's broken. 

Trying to get to the British Gas customer service is a feat in itself, everything is annoyingly automated, and you cannot get to talk to a real person. The earliest we could book for someone to come and look at the boiler was Tuesday. 

My husband kept calling, and finally managed to get hold of someone. They promised to come today.

Well, it's almost 5pm, and no sight of any engineer. And now that my husband called them again to ask what time the engineer might be coming, apparently they didn't book us in at all.
And the house in the meantime is getting colder and colder. I know that people live in igloos and all that, but it's a pain not to have the heating or hot water. The floor is church-cold on the ground floor, I can feel my feet turning into icicles, and that's me earing two pairs of socks and slippers.

I've been having endless cups of tea and coffee to keep myself warm, ironing (did a lot of ironing today), and baking too.

Yesterday's bake was a variation of the ricotta cake recipe given to me by my husband's aunt Giuseppina. It's a classic Italian cake, which is very tasty.

I had a jar of Duerr's Half Sugar Seville Orange marmalade from the latest Degustabox. My guys prefer jams to marmalade, and I don't eat it that often either. I decided to use some of the marmalade in the ricotta cake, and it worked really well.

Ricotta cake with marmalade
Ingredients:
zest of 1 lemon
3 medium eggs
180g caster sugar
3tbsp marmalade (+ 2tbsp for drizzle) (optional)
200g ricotta
300g self-raising flour
1tsp baking powder
50g Italian mixed peel (optional)
2tbsp lemon juice

Zest an orange in a medium sized mixing bowl. Beat in the eggs with caster sugar and marmalade. Add the ricotta, sift in the flour and baking powder. Leave about 1tbsp of flour, and dust it over the peel, then add the peel to the cake batter.
The cake batter is quite thick. Spoon it into a well-oiled bundt cake tin. Place the tin in the oven preheated to 180C. Bake for about 45 minutes. Check readiness with a wooden toothpick.
Once the cake is cooked, take it out of the tin. Mix 2tbsp marmalade with 2tbps lemon juice and spread over the cake.
Eat warm, or cold. It tastes good, with a cup of tea or coffee.

If you're not a fan of peel, swap it for raisins or pine nuts. A few years ago, I baked this cake with the addition of a savoury note from Grana Padano.

Marmalade Tea Bread with Duerr's Seville Orange Marmalade

I can't wait for the school term to be over. We're all tired and grumpy. Mornings are a bit of a struggle, and when a school run is over, it's like a mini-battle being won over.
Quite often my husband accompanies our younger son and me to school, and later we have a 20-25 minutes-long coffee break in one of the cafes nearby. We don't hold hands over the table, but I have a feeling that one of the young girls in one of the cafes suspects us of having an affair, as she sort of winks at me, when she serves our lattes. I wonder, what does she think, that we are "old" lovers meeting over a cup of coffee to then part our ways?!
If not having a coffee with my husband, I do enjoy having a cup of latte at home, preferably with a slice of tea bread or some chocolates.
Marmalade tea bread is very easy to make, and it keeps well in a tin for several days.

Duerr's Seville Orange Marmalade Tea Bread
Ingredients:
zest of 1 orange
2 medium eggs
75g muscovado sugar
1tsp cinnamon, ground
200 self-raising flour
juice of 1/2 orange (for the dough)
3 heaped tbsp Seville Orange marmalade
100g butter, melted
for icing: 4tbsp of icing sugar + orange juice

Grease a loaf tin, preheat oven to 180C.
Grate the zest of 1 orange into a medium sized mixing bowl. Beat in the eggs with muscovado sugar and cinnamon. Sieve in the flour, and stir well. Add the orange juice and marmalade into a smaller bowl, using a fork, mash the marmalade into the juice and mix together. Pour the maramalde mix into the cake dough. add the melted butter.
Spoon the cake mixture into the loaf tin. Bake for an hour+ at 180C until golden brown in colour. It's cooked when the wooden toothpick comes clean.
Allow the cake to cool for 10 minutes before removing from the tin. Mix the icing sugar with some orange juice until you get a runny consistency, and drizzle it all over the tea bread.

In this recipe I used Duerr's Seville Orange Marmalade. This fine cut marmalade is sweet, zingy, rich and deeply flavoured. Wonderful on hot toast or in a freshly baked croissant (I buy frozen croissants for our Sunday breakfast), it also works very well as an ingredient for baking cakes.

Disclosure: I received a couple of jars of Duerr's marmalade for the purposes of testing and reviewing. All opinions are my own.