Sugar Free Marmalade Cake

I love a challenge, and coming up with new and delicious ways to make cakes sugar free was one I couldn't resist! So I'll be posting a sugar free cake recipe every week for the next month, and doing something a bit different each time. This weeks cake needs a special ingredient - sugar free marmalade!
Sugar free jam & marmalade (technically they are fruit spreads, as they don't contain sugar) is made with fruit, grape juice & pectin. I love Meridian Wild Blueberry Spread & St Dalfour Strawberry Preserve. This recipe uses St Dalfour thick cut orange preserve (its marmalade, folks), which is available in most large supermarkets (hey, if I can find this in rural North Lincolnshire, you can find it. I'm not Yotam Ottolenghi demanding you source sparrow beaks & seventeen types of foraged twig for one sandwich here)

Sticky, delicious & sugar free

Sugar Free Marmalade Cake

175g butter
150g St Dalfour Marmalade (other orange preserves are available)
3 eggs
225g self raising flour

You'll need a 20cm springform cake tin.

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/G4. Cream the butter in a bowl & add the marmalade. Add the eggs one at a time. Fold in the flour. It should have a soft consistency that drops from the spoon. If its too thick, add a little milk. If its too thin, stir in a tablespoon of flour (or ground almonds). Pour into the prepared tin & bake for 45 - 55 minutes, or until a skewer poked into the middle comes out clean. Pretend you're in the Spanish Inquisition and cackle while you poke at your cake.
Turn out onto a wire rack & leave to cool. Spread some of the remaining marmalade on the top for a glossy finish. Eat with a cup of tea, trying not to get sticky fingers on your knitting

This is the kind of recipe that begs to be played around with. Substitute 30g of flour for cocoa powder & use black cherry or raspberry preserve. Or 30g of ground almonds and apricot preserve. The only thing I would suggest is use the darker preserves for chocolatey cakes and the paler ones for lighter sponges. Blueberry preserve in a pale cake comes out looking a bit weird. Not pink exactly, just a bit... wrong.

Chantico Chocolate Cake

So a while back I persuaded Mike to make a spiced chocolate stout, because as a lover of South American foods, I am heartily sick of chilli chocolate stouts made with raw green chillis or pure capsaicin*.
We based the recipe on Mole Poblano (not mole the burrowing mammal and curse of lawns but mo-ley, a rich paste made from roasted chiles, chocolate, nuts & spices popular in Mexico), crammed it full of roasted Ancho, Pasilla & Mulato chiles, fairtrade cocoa, cinnamon and peppercorns. And its pretty damn good.

 We named it Chantico (pronounced Chan-TEE-co), after the Aztec goddess of home fires & volcanos. Here she is dressed as a red snake with a crown of cactus leaves. She was turned into a dog after eating paprika (so no paprika in our stout!) and had a tendency to go batshit if anyone touched her stuff (and I'm sure we can all appreciate that)
And, aside from drinking it, what better use of a fruity, spicy chocolate stout is there? Making a cake, of course! And not just any old cake, a seriously decadent, damp & slightly bitter cake topped with a foamy head.

Chantico Chocolate Cake

For The Cake
250g butter
200g plain chocolate
300g demerara sugar
250ml chantico (or any well flavoured stout)
300g plain flour
50g cocoa
2 eggs
2tsp baking powder

For The Topping
300g Mascarpone
100ml double cream
150g icing sugar

You'll also need a 23cm springform cake tin

Preheat the oven to 180C/G4. Throw the butter, stout (there will be half a bottle left, better drink it!) & plain chocolate in a large pan & put over a low heat until the butter & chocolate melts. Resist the urge to just drink the mix. Remove from the heat, add the sugar & stir. Leave to cool for a few minutes and whisk in the eggs and cocoa powder. Add the flour & baking powder & mix well. If the mix is a little stiff add a splash of stout (if you've drunk all the stout milk will do). Pour into the cake tin & bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until it is firm to the touch and a skewer stabbed into the centre (if you favour the Vlad the Impaler approach to cake making) comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin & turn out.
For the topping, whip the cream to stiff peaks. In a separate bowl whisk the mascarpone, then add the icing sugar 50g at a time (you might want to sieve the icing sugar if its a bit lumpy). Fold in the whipped cream & spread over the cake to give it a creamy, foamy head.

This works just as well as a filling, if you want a sandwich cake. Divide the mixture between two 23cm springform cake tins & bake for 25-30 minutes.
This recipe also works really well with Belgian fruit beers like Kriek (lambic cherry beer) or with a strong old ale.

*Wow, it must have taken you 8 seconds to come up with that. May Quetzalcoatl fly out of the sun and punch you in the throat. And also eat you.