Saturday 25 June 2011

Chocolate orange cake


I like to think of this cake as an 'everyday cake', a snacking cake, something to be there in the cake tin for when the urge for a little something sweet strikes. There isn't a gooey rich icing or frosting, but that's what I mean by an everyday cake. The cake is good enough not to need any embellishment, it can stand on it's own merit.

This is an adaptation of a recipe in Linda Collister's Easy Baking. I've already made a version of this cake here and so I knew that it was delicious anyway, but this time, my adaptations of the recipe were slightly different. I wanted to use up some yogurt rather than creme fraiche, and I fancied orange as the flavour - chocolate and orange are a match made in heaven (along with chocolate and mint). I also used some 90% cocoa solids chocolate that I had hanging around - it seemed too bitter to eat on its own (although I haven't tried this yet) and so a cake seemed like the perfect opportunity to allow its cocoa flavour to shine through.

Ah, the ubiquitous brown square - or, how many angles can you take a photo of brown squares from?!?


Moist chocolate orange cake
Ingredients

60g dark chocolate, melted (I used 90% cocoa solids)
120g soft butter
170g light muscovado sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 large egg
220g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
20g cocoa powder
120g yogurt (I used full fat Yeo Valley)
Zest and juice of one large orange

Method
- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Grease and line an 8"/20cm deep square cake tin.
- Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
- Add the melted, cooled, chocolate and mix to combine.
- Add the egg, flour, vanilla, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, cocoa powder and yogurt and mix well, until all is combined and no traces of flour remain.
- The mixture seemed very stiff at this point so I added the juice of the zested orange and mixed well to make the mixture slacker.
- Spoon into the tin and level.
- Bake for 40-50 minutes until just firm. (The original recipe specified 25-30 minutes, but at this point my cake was still extremely wobbly and nowhere near done.)
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin before turning out.
- Cut into 16 squares.



Just as delicious as I remembered from last time, but more delicate and crumbly than I remembered. It was an extremely moist cake, and very delicate indeed - it fell apart as I picked it up to eat! The flavour was lovely though - really orange-y. I'm not sure about the texture of the zest in there though, I used a microplane grater (coarse) to grate the zest and next time I think I'll use something finer. But that was my only minor niggle, and colleagues thought it was lovely!

7 comments:

Rhyleysgranny said...

Love the combination of chocolate and orange. You have tugged my heart strings

Kate@whatkatebaked said...

An absolute winner of a combination! I cannot resist chocolate and Orange- this cake brings back many (very happy) memories of discovering a Terrys chocolate Orange at the bottom of my Christmas stocking each year... this cake would be the grown-up version!

Brownieville Girl said...

Your cake looks fantastic - light as a feather.

Another fan of orange and chocolate here!!

Anne said...

I so love chocolate and orange together, even more so in cake form! Looks scrummy!

Caroline said...

Ryleysgranny - it was a lovely cake, I'd send some if I could!

Kate - it did taste very much like a Terry's Chocolate orange (it's not Terry's, it's mine!!!)

BVG - thank you. Choc orange is such a classic combo!

Anne - it was scrummy!

Johanna GGG said...

it looks like a good honest cake and I agree that chocolate and orange is a winning combination

Caroline said...

Johanna - thanks. I had a piece today from the freezer, and it's reminded me how lovely it was - very soft and delicate!

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