Preheat oven to 175°C.

Use a 20cm cake tin, ideally with a pop-up base, grease it, line with greaseproof, grease the paper.

Take your organic orange(s), wash and cut off the ends if they’re hard or “stalky”, cut into chunks, remove any seeds, and then give them a wizz in a blender/food processor until you have a thick, course puree.

Throw the eggs and sugar into a large bowl and mix at high speed until “fluffed up”.

Shake the flour and baking powder through a sieve into the mix to ensure no lumps and stir it in slowly.

Add the marge/butter/oil to the mixture and continue to slowly blend it all in.

Stir in the yogurt.

Finally add the pureed orange and vanilla extract and stir until evenly combined.

At this point, it should look more like a pancake batter, ie quite runny. Don’t panic, this is fine!

Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin.

Bake for about 1 hour, then test with a smooth knife to check if it’s cooked enough. It’s difficult to tell, as the blade will come out a bit sticky even if it is cooked enough. I usually give it another 5-10 mins on 165c if I’m not convinced. But if it’s coming away from the sides and has cracks in the surface, it’s about there.

Once it’s done, allow the cake to cool before removing from the tin.

Take another orange and extract the juice into a glass jug. Add about 150g of sugar.

Give it a good stir then pop it in the microwave on high, but watch it closely. As soon as it starts to bubble up, give it another good stir and then another zap. Continue this process until the mix becomes syrupy. If it doesn’t thicken, add more sugar. Be careful not to over do it, or you’ll end up with toffee! And don’t splash it onto your skin – it burns!

At this point, I take a little Cointreau and brush it onto the surface, and put a little (less than half a tsp) into the glaze mix.

Pour / brush the glaze all over the cake and around the sides. It’s worth standing the cake on something that allows the glaze to run off onto a plate. First time I did this with the cake straight on a plate, (and my glaze a bit too sticky), it became totally glued onto the plate!

Leave it to cool and the glaze set.

Now the most difficult part – your natural inclination is to eat this straight away, as it smells so good. But if you can, keep it for a day or two in an airtight container, by which time the orange oil will start to mature and the flavour will become more intense.

If you can’t wait, keep a least a couple of pieces back for a few days and you’ll see what I mean. The last piece is the best! ????

Ingredients

One nice large organic orange or enough to make up to the weight up to 300g

3 eggs

175g sugar

275g self-raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

70g marge or butter (softened in the microwave) + 30g olive oil. – adjust this ratio to your own taste.

100g natural yogurt

For the glaze:

Another orange.

150g sugar

A splash of Cointreau