John Whaite makes a delicious pecan and orange loaf with figs recipe that goes well stilton cheese on Lorraine.

John says: “This cake is a lot like carrot cake and makes perfect toast when it starts to go stale! And – believe it or not – it also goes really well with stilton cheese…”

Ingredients: 250g salted butter, at room temperature, 400g light brown soft sugar, Zest of 2 medium oranges, 2 eggs, 300ml buttermilk (see below for alternative for this if needed), 1 tbsp vanilla bean paste or extract, 300g plain flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 2 tsp ground cinnamon, 200g pecans, chopped and 200g dried figs, roughly chopped.

For the drizzle: 150g icing sugar, 200g full fat cream cheese and Zest and juice of 1 orange.

To make the cake, preheat the oven to 170°C/150°C fan/Gas 3

Place the softened butter in a mixing bowl and add the sugar and zest. Beat together until the sugar is well incorporated in the butter and it is fluffy.

Add the eggs, buttermilk and vanilla and beat in. Sift over the flour, baking powder and cinnamon, and stir in until you have a smooth batter. Fold in the pecans and figs, then scoop into the greased ring shaped mould tin or loaf tin.

Bake for 60–75 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Allow to cool in the tin – this will help to create a gorgeous crust on the cake

Beat together your ‘drizzle’ ingredients (icing sugar, cream cheese and orange juice and zest) until smooth and fairly runny. Drizzle over the baked round/loaf cake.