Orange Weekend

I was having trouble thinking of ideas for a birthday present for my dad when I saw a marmalade recipe in the newspaper. Suddenly I knew exactly what I would do and it would be the perfect present. My local veg shop was doing 2 for £1 on blood oranges so along with my Sevilles I bought six of these, with the image of beautiful jewel-like red jelly in my mind.

The recipe I used didn't request preserving sugar or added pectin so the process was done thoroughly in order to draw out the needed pectin. I peeled the zest off of about 5 oranges in strips and tied it up in muslin, and then thinly sliced the rest of the fruit, pith and all. This was all bubbled and reduced with about 750 ml water for 2 hours - great for producing a nice orangey fragrance throughout the flat. After 2 hours I drained this liquid through moor muslin and used this syrup to finally make the marmalade with. I made a whole second batch using the same method with the blood oranges I'd bought.

The blood oranges were unfortunately not quite as bloody as I'd hoped, making for quite an average coloured marmalade, although cloudier. The standard Seville one looked and tasted exactly how I thought marmalade should - hooray. It was much appreciated by my dad who received the parcel just in time for breakfast.

The weekend continued to be somewhat orange themed with the decision to make Ottolenghi's celebratory-looking Orange Polenta Cake for R's 'Sunday Best' twenty-first birthday. With only a couple of hours before we were expected, I was determined to make it, although succeeding with the caramel topping proved tricky under time constraints. The cake is made upside down, with a layer of caramel at the base, followed by sliced orange and then the cake mixture. I had never really made caramel before, but went about it calmly following the recipe and it turned out perfectly the first time - however I wasn't quick enough to spread it over the entire base. Casually, I scrapped it and started again not thinking that both second and third attempts would fail. This made for a slightly less relaxed baking process than normal but with the only downside of a slightly over-moist base, the cake was perfect for a glamourous birthday girl.