Marmalade Pudding Cake In Advance

Our answer

Nigella's Marmalade Pudding Cake (from KITCHEN) is a sponge cake flavoured with marmalade and orange zest and finished with a marmalade glaze. The cake is more robust than a traditional sponge cake but it does rise thanks to a combination of bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) and baking powder. One of the problems of making the cake batter too far in advance is that these raising agents are activated as soon as they are mixed with liquid and if the batter is left for too long then the raising agents expire and the cake will not rise as well.

As the cake is made in a food processor then you could put all of the ingredients in the processor except for the eggs, then just before you are ready to bake the cake you can crack the eggs into the processor, whizz up the batter, transfer it to the dish and bake the cake. This mixing will take a mere matter of minutes. Otherwise you could bake the cake 2 hours in advance, then once out of the oven glaze it, cover the top of the dish with foil (or wrap the whole dish with foil) and leave it in a warm place until ready to serve. It is quite tricky to reheat the whole cake without it drying out, but you can reheat portions of leftovers in a microwave in short bursts until the sponge has warmed through.