chocolate orange cake

Last weekend was spent making a couple of chocolate cakes for other people's Chrimble celebrations so no experiments came out of my kitchen cake-wise.

Christmastime always makes me want to make more cake. It's lovely to be able to give a gift of something you've made yourself and what could be more Christmassy than chocolate orange cake. This one is destined for my aunts and cousins as they are rather partial to a bit of cake... must run in the family.

I was thinking of those scrummy Terry's chocolate oranges that you have to bash really hard to get them apart so it involved a bit of cake mix sampling to ensure the right level of orange. So I started with my very chocolate cake recipe and adapted it with orange juice, zest and marmalade for added the orangeyness.

100g dark chocolate, melted and allowed to cool slightly
250g butter, at room temperature
250g light muscovado sugar
½ tsp salt
50g cocoa powder (I like Green & Blacks)
250g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
3 eggs
zest of 2 oranges
juice of 2 oranges (about 150ml)

to fill
2-3 tbsp orange marmalade (the one with the bits in)
100g butter
200g icing sugar

Prepare in the same way as the very chocolate cake but add the orange zest with the butter and sugar at the start. The orange juice goes in at the end instead of the milk until you have a dropping consistency. Bake for 25-30 minutes and allow to cool.

For the filling, cream the butter and gradually add the icing sugar.  Add the marmalade according to how tangy you want it.  I like the bitterness of the marmalade sweetened up by the butter icing so you end up with that sweet and sour creaminess.

Sandwich together the two halves with the butter icing in the middle.  Try to make sure you get the butter icing all the way to the edge so you can run a wet finger round it (don't lick it unless you're going to eat the whole cake yourself!) to make a smooth edge.  Makes it easier for getting the chocolate covering even on the edges.

I intended to add a bit of orange extract in the covering but had run out.

Smother with the chocolate cake covering and leave to set.  I decorated this cake with the orange bits from mixed peel and some more cocoa powder just in case it wasn't chocolatey enough!


Now what to do with all that left over mincemeat and cream?

butterfly cupcakes

Specially for a little girl's birthday party

Had the great honour of making an army of cupcakes for a little girl's birthday party so made 20 each of lemon and strawberry cupcakes decorated with lashings of butter icing and little white butterflies, and filled with jam.


to make just 20 cakes
150g stork for cakes
150g caster sugar
3 eggs (free-rangers of course)
150g self-raising flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp lemon or strawberry flavouring
1/2 jar of lemon curd or strawberry jam (not the lumpy sort though)

preheat oven to 180c.  Put the paper cases into bun tins ready
soften the stork then beat in the caster sugar
add eggs one at a time
mix in the flour, baking powder and flavouring
half fill the paper cases and bake for about 15 minutes or until golden brown and firm to the touch
leave to cool
once cooled inject the cakes with the jam/lemon curd until it squirts out the top a little


for the butter icing topping
250g unsalted butter
500g icing sugar
2 tsp lemon or strawberry flavouring
a few drops of yellow or red colouring

beat the butter until soft
gradually add the icing sugar
add flavouring and colouring
pipe on to cakes in a fancy swirl



                   I topped the cakes with little butterflies made from ready-made icing.  I've got a nifty little cutter that cuts out the shape and prints the butterfly patterns on the icing all in one go.  To give them a bit of shape I hung them on wooden skewers (patterned side down) until firm then stuck them onto the butter icing before that set.



feed to small children and stand well back while they get a sugar rush then a hit of artificial colouring!

it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Started feeling Christmassy so it's time for some mince pies.  I find pastry on the top and bottom a bit too much (and shop bought ones soooo sweet) so I like to use Richard Bertinet's recipe that I found in a magazine a few years ago.  I prefer to use homemade flaky pastry rather than shortcrust so you get a bit of a crunch, gooey mincemeat and soft frangipane on top.

 

I tend to buy the cheapest mincemeat and add bits to my own taste.  I like to add the zest and juice of an orange, some mixed spice, extra sultanas, brandy, grated apple and some chopped nuts.  

Bertinet's recipe for 36 mince pies is as follows

750g shortcrust pastry

200g unsalted butter

200g caster sugar

200g ground almonds

50g flour

2 large eggs

2 tbsp brandy

about 400g mincemeat

flaked almonds and icing sugar to decorate

preheat oven to 180c and grease 3 12 hole bun tins

for frangipane topping

beat butter until very soft then gradually add the sugar and ground almonds

mix in the flour followed by the egg and finally the brandy

roll out the pastry until quite thin and cut out rounds to fit bun tin

half fill the pasty cases with mincemeat

put a spoonfull of the frangipane on top and smooth over.  It doesn't matter too much how smooth it is as when it goes in the oven it soon melts all over

sprinkle with flaked almons and bake for about 25 minutes until golden

leave to cool and dust with icing sugar

Thanks to Dad for the annual supply of brandy!

x

very chocolate cake

Scrummy chocolate with chocolate icing, decorated with chocolate balls and chocolate shavings, oh and some morello cherry jam inside.

adapted a bit from Felicity Cloake's recipe

100g dark chocolate, melted and allowed to cool slightly
250g butter, at room temperature
250g light muscovado sugar
½ tsp salt
50g cocoa powder
250g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
3 eggs
150ml milk

half jar morello cherry jam
block of Silver Spoon dark chocolate cake covering
mixed chocolate balls

Grease and line the bases of 2 x 20cm loose bottom sandwich tins with greaseproof paper. Preheat the oven to 160c.

Cream together the butter and sugar with salt.

Add the eggs to the butter mixture one at a time to prevent the mixture from curdling (thank you Mary Berry) then add half the dry ingredients followed by the melted chocolate. Add the remaining dried ingredients, followed by enough milk to give a dropping consistency.  Divide between the two tins and bake for about 25–30 minutes until firm in the centre.


Wait for it to cool.  Add the jam and sandwich the two together.  Prepare the chocolate cake covering as directed on the packet and smear about 3/4 of it all over the cake.  Sprinkle with chocolate balls before the covering sets so they stick on.

With the remaining cake covering, pour over a chopping board and leave to set (I put it in the freezer for 5 minutes).  Once set, scrape the chocolate with a pallet knife to get shavings and stick to the outside of the cake.  I found that dipping a pallet knife in boiling water and holding it against the side of the cake was sufficient to melt the icing enough for the chocolate shavings to stick.

Find people to eat it.