Zucchini and Orange Marmalade Tea Cake

As promised, here's the recipe for the zucchini bread I baked a few days ago. The recipe is originally from The Tartine Cookbook, which so far has only given me great results. I've added a few ingredients to the original and marked them with an asterisk. The instructions are paraphrased from the original. Happy baking!

• all-purpose flour (1 3/4 cups and 2 tbs)
• baking soda (1/2 tsp)
• baking powder (1/2 tsp)
• ground cinnamon (1 tsp)
• ground cardamom (1 tsp)*
• large eggs (2)
• any kind of vegetable oil (1/2 cup and 2 tbs)
• sugar (3/4 cup)
• orange marmalade (1/2 cup, I used D'Arbo's bitter orange marmalade)
• grated zucchini (2 1/2 cups, about one large zucchini with ends removed)
• grated carrot (1/2 cup, or one medium one)*
• sea salt (1/2 tsp)
• walnuts, lightly toasted and coarsely chopped (1 cup)
• sugar for topping (which I skipped)

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees, and lightly oil and flour a 9x5" loaf pan.

What I like about loaf cakes is they rarely require an electric mixer. All I used was a whisk and a wooden spoon. Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and spices.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, oil, sugar, and marmalade until the mixture emulsifies. This will take a little bit of elbow grease, and will result in a thick batter.

Combine the dry and wet mixtures (it doesn't really matter which into which) and stir to incorporate. Add the nuts. There's no need to overmix the batter, just make sure there are no white spots. Transfer the batter into your loaf pan, smooth the top, sprinkle with sugar if you like, and bake for 60-70 minutes. The cookbook says to partially cool the cake, then transfer to a rack for complete cooling. However, I just left the cake in the pan until completely cool and the results were fine. The cake is nice toasted, but I like it even better straight out of the refrigerator: cold, dense, and so moist it can almost be described as juicy.