This is an elegant dinner party pudding adapted from the humble lemon drizzle cake. It looks a bit complicated because of the different elements, but in fact it’s pretty straightforward. The recipe is based on an orange drizzle cake which I was served, pre-performance, when I went to see Sister Act at Her Majesty’s Prison Bronzefield. For more on that see the account below the recipe.

Recipe for Sister Act Extra-drizzly Cointreau Orange Cake

Ingredients for one cake, serving ten people you’ll need:

• 100g (just under half a cup) melted butter
• 160 ml (just under ¾ cup) double cream
• 250g/1¼ cups) caster sugar
• 4 eggs
• 250g (1½ cups)self raising flour (or 250g plain and 2 teasp bicarbonate of soda)
• finely grated zest of one orange (keep a little back for garnishing)

and the ingredients for the filling:

• 10 tbsp orange curd (or even better, if you’ve made it, bergamot curd)

and for the internal drizzle:

• juice of one orange (100ml/just under half a cup)
• 25g/1 oz/2tbsp caster sugar

and the external sauce:

• 150ml/just over ½ cup blood orange juice
• 75ml/just over ¼ cup Cointreau

and you’ll also need:

• 200ml tub/just over ¾ cup crème fraîche

Method:

1. preheat the oven to 180ºC
2. beat the butter, cream and sugar together
3. add the eggs, one at a time, beat
4. sift in flour
5. add zest
6. spoon into a greased loaf tin
7. bake for 50 minutes, then cover with foil and bake a further 25 minutes
8. turn out and leave to cool
9. make holes with a skewer and pour in the internal drizzle
10. serve with the crème fraiche, and the sauce in a jug for people to help themselves.

Sister Act is the third joint prisoners, staff, and Pimlico Opera production I’ve been to, the other two being West Side Story at HMP Winchester and Assassins at HMP Coldingley. All of them have been excellent and very special productions. Of course, all the professional singers are outstanding, but there are always a couple of prisoners who astonish with their ability and you can’t help wondering what might have been if those individuals had been born with another set of luckier cards.

The selection of the work to be performed is key. The slightly less talented and experienced prisoners can carry anything along with just sheer enthusiasm and gusto. I remember in particular the power and humour with which the prisoners at Winchester sang:

“Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke,

You gotta understand,

It’s just our bringin’ up-ke

That gets us out of hand.

Our mothers all are junkies,

Our fathers all are drunks.

Golly Moses, natcherly we’re punks!”

and on looking through the biographies of the cast in the programme I could understand why so many of them were singing with such feeling.

Bronzefield is a women’s prison and so Sister Act is another excellent choice since it tells the story of a colourful, larger-then-life gangster’s moll who falls foul of her ex-lover and, with the help of an old schoolfriend/admirer, seeks asylum in a convent. Whoopi Goldberg plays the part in the film of the same name. Although the ‘low life’ is clearly played with relish by the cast, so are the nuns, and there were some really cracking cameo parts, in particular the very old and the very young nuns. It was very apparent just how much of a personal achievement the whole production was for everyone involved, and watching it was quite an emotional experience (others in the audience also felt the same). For a couple of magical hours the baggage, past and future, of everyone in the room is held to the side, and what is happening on stage is the focus of every individual. It gives a whole different meaning to  ‘audience participation’.

There are of course, strict procedures for entering the prison and there is no interval in the performance, but while waiting to be moved through to our seats, we were offered lemon and orange drizzle cake made by the inmates. Both were good, but the orange was the best. The cake can be kept in an airtight tin for about five days, and even frozen. You can make the cake in about the same time as it takes to listen to the soundtrack of Sister Act.

One of the greatest problems for prisoners is boredom. Theatrical projects such as the Pimlico Opera productions help, as do the needlework produced by Fine Cell Work (go here  for a fantastic fish cushion) or the carpentry produced by Rough Stuff (go  here for The Big Ronnie – the largest of a range of attractive and different chopping boards).

Below, see a trailer for the film version of Sister Act starring Whoopi Goldberg.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7j2aEJxxDY]