Orange nut teabread

[igenlode]

I had a large orange that had been in the fridge for rather a long time, so I opened the scrapbook looking for one of the recipes that stipulated the zest of an orange, and found "Orange nut teabread" on a page of newsprint dating from the 1970s or 1980s. (Old enough not to bother with metric approximations, anyway, but unlikely from external evidence to predate official metrification.)

(click for picture)

The recipe claims that it is more interesting than bread but not so rich as cake; I'd classify it squarely as cake, myself (unlike, say, fruit loaf), but it really does need the scraping of butter suggested. There's only 2oz butter to 12oz flour in the whole recipe.

You were supposed to chop up a whole piece of candied orange peel, but I used coarse-cut homemade marmalade, which amounts to much the same thing! You were also supposed to use chopped walnuts, but I used generic chopped nuts, the listed ingredients of which comprise a lot of cheap peanuts and not many expensive walnuts -- the distinctive bitterness of walnuts might have been more sophisticated, but it's quite nice anyway.

I used the juice of half the orange to glaze the loaf instead of the milk and sugar glaze suggested. Then I ate the other half of the denuded fruit ;-)

Comments

[sallymn]

Oh yum, that sounds good...

[igenlode]

As the recipe promises, it has a delicate orange flavour, with slight texture provided by the chunks of orange peel and the finely-chopped nuts.

It's quite a plain cake - a bit like date and walnut cake without the dates :-)

[sallymn]

I like plain cake :)

[betweensunandmoon]

Ooh, looks delicious!

[igenlode]

It was a lot more successful than my attempt at rhubarb and ginger American muffins ;-)

(Today's recipe: gammon, leek, and barley casserole, or how to make a single slice of gammon into four portions...)