Chocolate Orange Cake

The flavour combination of chocolate and orange is one of my favourites. This recipe was inspired by one I came across in a Sainsbury magazine last year. I tried making the original once or twice and each time it sank in the middle, so I reverted back to inventing a variation of my own using the same flavours.  Once again I’m using my grandmother’s system of weighing the eggs in their shells as a basis for all the other ingredients and I’ve used the all in one method of mixing, with the addition of the flavourings at the end.

To make an 8 or 9 inch round cake you will need the following ingredients:

• the weight of 3 large free range eggs (weighed in their shells) in softened butter, caster sugar and self raising flour, plus an extra 25g of self raising flour
• 1 tablespoon of milk
• the zest of 1 orange
• 40g of chocolate chips, either milk or dark
• 1 teaspoon of pure orange extract

Method:

• line a deep 8 or 9 inch cake tin with greaseproof paper
• preheat the oven to 180°C
• place the butter, sugar, flour, and eggs into a roomy mixing bowl and beat everything together until the mixture is smooth and well blended
• stir the milk, orange zest and orange extract into the mixture
• spoon the mixture into the cake tin. Roughly level the surface and then sprinkle the chocolate chips over the top of the cake mixture

• bake the cake for approximately 50 minutes, or until the cake is well risen and golden brown in colour. A skewer inserted into the cooked cake should have no cake mixture sticking to it.
• leave the cake in the tin to cool completely. Do not remove the cake from the tin as the icing is poured over the cake whilst it is still in the tin

For the icing you will need:

• 150g of icing sugar and 10g of cocoa powder, seived together
• to the sugar and cocoa add the juice of ½ an orange
• a few chocolate orange sticks to decorate

Mix these ingredients together well until the icing is as smooth as you can manage. I don’t worry too much about the odd lump! The cake is finished off by breaking a few chocolate orange sticks into pieces and sprinkling them over the top of the icing.

 

Leave the cake in the tin for the icing to set before removing it. It’ll be worth the wait, I promise you!