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Dundee Cake with Hot Marmalade Sauce
Dundee, Oregon was named for the home of pioneer William Reid - Dundee, Scotland. Plums, filberts and English walnuts were soon the major area crops due to fertile soil and the mild weather of the Willamette/Yamhill Valley. Hazelnut trees now exist side by side with some of the best Pinot Noir vineyards in the world here in the Red Hills of Dundee. In honor of our Scottish roots, we have been known to whip up this traditional fruit cake from time to time.
As you might know Dundee, Scotland has been synonymous with marmalade for hundreds of years. One story goes that around 1800, James Keiller bought a cargo of Seville oranges very cheaply from a Spanish ship sheltering from a storm in Dundee harbor, but they were so bitter that he couldn't sell them. His clever wife, Janet - the real heroine of this story, made them into a jam rather than waste them and thereby created international fame and fortune for her family and descendants who still make it today. This light traditional fruit cake makes good use of the local marmalade. That's one story. I've heard others about the origins as well.
Here's the ingredients for the cake:
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1/1/4 cups all purpose flour |
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1 tsp. baking powder |
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1/4 tsp. salt |
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1/8 tsp. pumpkin pie spice | ||
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3/4 cup [1 1/2 sticks] unsalted butter, room temperature | ||
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3/4 cup plus 2 Tbs. sugar | ||
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1 Tbs. whisky | ||
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1 1/2 tsp. grated orange peel | ||
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3 large eggs | ||
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3/4 cup golden raisins | ||
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3/4 cup dried currants | ||
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1/3 cup chopped candied orange peel | ||
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2 Tbs. orange marmalade and some whole blanched almonds |
For the cake - preheat your oven to 300 degrees F. Butter an 8-inch-diameter cake pan with 2-inch-high sides; line the bottom with parchment paper. Sift flour, baking powder, salt and spice into a medium bowl. Using an electric mixer, beat butter, sugar, whisky, and grated orange peel in a large bowl until fluffy. Beat in eggs 1 at a time. Stir in the dry ingredients, then all the dried fruits and candied peel. Transfer batter to prepared pan. Now bake the cake for 1 hour. Remove cake from the oven. Brush top with the 2 tablespoons of marmalade. Arrange the almonds around the edge, pressing lightly so they adhere. Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 20 minutes longer. Cool the cake completely in the pan on a rack. Turn cake out on the pan; peel off parchment. Place upright on a plate. Now whilst the cake was baking, you were preparing the sauce.
Next, the marmalade sauce:
Late in January and into February the best marmalade oranges - Seville oranges are available for a few short weeks in the stores here in Oregon, so we buy up a load and make enough our own marmalade to last the year. For store bought marmalade, Robertson's Seville Orange Marmalade is a great UK producer and here locally in North American Sheriff's Marmalade is pretty good too.
Here's what you need for the sauce:
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2/3 cup Scottish orange marmalade |
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3 Tbs. whisky |
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3 oranges |
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Sweetened whipped cream |
Here's what you do for marmalade sauce:
Combine marmalade and whisky in a medium saucepan. Cut all peel and white pith from oranges. Working over a bowl to catch the juices, cut between membranes, releasing orange segments. Add 2 tablespoons orange juice from bowl to saucepan. Stir over medium-low heat until marmalade melts and the sauce is heated through, about 5 minutes. Transfer sauce to serving bowl.
We drizzle most all the sauce over the cake, put the orange segments around the base and top with whipped cream.
Sources: Bon Appetit / Sue Lawrence - May 2004