Chocolate Orange Syrup Loaf Cake Recipe

I am a big fan of Nigella Lawson's no nonsense if sometimes a little over-indulgent attitude to cooking. Her 'How to be a Domestic Goddess' is my go-to book when I am looking for something yummy to bake just for the hell of it, and the Lemon Syrup Loaf cake is a definite favourite in our house!
Sometimes, however, only chocolate will do so a few weeks back I had a play with the Lemon Syrup Loaf recipe and came up with a gorgeous chocolate orange version...

 

Scrummy Chocolate Orange Cake recipe

You may have noticed I have a slight obsession with traditional home baked cakes and puddings.

Duerr's - producers of jam, marmalade and peanut butter of extreme yumminess who have already featured a couple of times on this blog - have obviously noticed this too and sent me some more of their lovely jams and asked me to test out a few more recipes from their 'Baking for Boys' series on YouTube.

I was more than happy to oblige!


Last weekend we made the gorgeous Victoria Sponge with Raspberry Jam and Cream - it was lovely. In fact it was so lovely we kind of got carried away and ate it all before I had a chance to photograph it for bloggy purposes... oops!

On Sunday we were heading over to the inlaws for a family Sunday dinner so I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to try out another recipe in the series - Chocolate Orange Cake. I can tell you it went down an absolute storm. And I actually managed to take a photo or too before everyone tucked in...

Scrummy Chocolate Orange Cake

Ingredients

 For the cake
100g softened butter
50g cocoa powder
90ml warm water
3 large eggs
300g caster sugar
175g self raising flour
1 rounded tsp baking powder
zest of one orange
 For the icing
150g good dark chocolate
150ml double cream
some Duerr's Fine Cut Orange Marmalade

Method
Place the cocoa powder in a large bowl and mix to a paste with the hot water.
Add the eggs then the butter and mix it in.
Stir in the sugar (but don't over stir it!) before adding the flour and baking powder.
Finally add the orange zest.  If the mix seems dry add a little milk to loosen it up.

Pour into two prepared cake tins (I used the liners like the ones used in the video but you could just grease, base line and flour the edges of each tin)

Pop them into a preheated oven 170c/GAS5 for about 25 mins.

While the cake is baking break up the chocolate and put it, with the cream into a bowl placed over a pan of water. Heat the water gently to melt the chocolate into the cream. Once it's all melted remove from the heat and allow to properly cool, for about half an hour, giving it an occasional stir.

When the cakes are done, allow to cool for a few minutes then sandwich together with a big dollop of marmalade. Smooth some more marmalade over the top of the cake and then cover with the cooled chocolate ganache (posh name for cream/choc mix ;-) )

If you want you can grate more chocolate over the top to decorate.

The original recipe called for Apricot jam in the middle but I wanted a full on choc orange experience so went with marmalade all the way - it was well worth it!

To watch the boys baking this cake check out the video below...




As you can see this show stopper is dead easy to make and the smell as it was baking was heavenly!
Also, I can guarantee there won't be any left overs for later unless you stash a slice in the fridge, behind the butter... *cough*

Happy Baking!

Veggie Box Recipes :: Apple and Cinnamon Crunch Muffins

I love putting fruit and veg into cakes and the moistness of muffins means they lend themselves particularly well to these additions. I've done it before with the Courgette and Cocoa Muffins and the Scrummy Spicey Carrot Muffins . A cake that contains one of my five-a-day must be considered a health food surely?

I had 2 medium sized bramley apples in my veg box this week - not really enough for apple crumble or pie but more than enough for this tasty muffin recipe!!







Ingredients:

• 1 egg
• 120ml milk
• 60ml sunflower oil
• 2 medium cooking apples peeled, cored and grated
• 200g flour
• 100g caster sugar
• 2tsp baking powder
• 1tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/4tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

for the crunchy topping:

• 60g light soft brown sugar
• 25g chopped hazelnuts (or nut of your choice)
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Set oven to 180c / gas 4

First make your topping by mixing the sugar, nuts and cinnamon together. I use a herb chopper attachment to my Braun stick blender but you could whizz it in food mixer. You need a grainy finish, with a few nutty chunks - not too fine! Set to one side for a moment.

Next combine the egg, milk, oil and grated apple in a bowl.

Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder, bicarb, salt and cinnamon in another bowl.

Pour the 'wet' ingredients into the 'dry' ingredients and mix to a lumpy batter.

Spoon the batter into muffin cases then add a spoonful of the topping. Try and sprinkle it evenly on each muffin.

Pop in the oven for about 20mins until tops are brown and crispy.

We ate these warm from the oven with custard as pudding and cold the next morning for breakfast with some Greek yoghurt and honey. Lets face it, who doesn't like the idea of cake for breakfast? The Little Man even took one to school in his lunch box so they MUST be good!!

If you want you can add some sultanas to the wet mix too - a good handful should be enough and will earn you extra fruity Brownie points ;-)

Enjoy!

Adventures with my bread machine (part 1)

I have had my bread machine for about three years now. Up until this point I have been quite happy just making bread with it. It makes a perfectly acceptable loaf without all the nasties in commercially produced sliced white.
The timer function is brilliant too. Waking up in the morning to the smell of a freshly baked loaf is almost enough to convince me I actually live in a cute little apartment above a boulangerie in a hip Paris back street . . . (then the Little Man jumps on me and says 'Wake up Mummy!' and it all comes flooding back! But I digress.)

Sometimes I use the bread machine to make the dough before shaping it and popping it in the oven. Some might say that's cheating but I disagree. My bread machine is like my assistant baker - it does all the hard work and lets me do the fancy creative bit and take the credit!  But I have often wondered what else my bread machine could do. I mean there are about 15 different settings on it from basic bread to wholemeal to fast bake, super fast bake and even jam. Luckily for me I got a bread machine recipe book for Christmas and after trying the basic white loaf (which came out lovely) I thought I would have a go at a fruity tea bread.

How it SHOULD look...

This no fat recipe is stuffed with cinnamon spiced raisins soaked in earl grey tea over night then added to the bread pan with egg, self raising flour, sugar and baking powder. I knew it wouldn't rise fantastically well. I also knew it would take a lot longer than just baking a cake in the oven (best part of two and half hours actually) but I'm a firm believer in trying anything once.

So was it worth it?

In a word - no!

It didn't rise at all and felt like a water logged slab of clay when I had finally managed to get it out of the pan. The cake crust was chewy, the inside was stodgy.  I didn't even get the benefit of lovely baking aroma throughout the house while it was cooking.  In all a complete waste of ingredients!

Out of the pan. Eventually!

hmmm not looking much like the one in the book!

You may wonder why I even bothered posting this to my blog but I thought it would be nice to show you that not everything we make and bake turns out wonderful! To be fair it didn't taste *that* bad, more like bread pudding (not a fan) than tea bread.
I haven't completely given up hope of getting more out of my machine - there are plenty of savoury and sweet bread recipes (using bread flour rather than self raising flour) to try but I think I'll shall avoid the 'cake' recipes in future. It really is just easier to whip up something by hand and in the oven.

In the meantime I shall continue to enjoy my 'Breakfast in Paris' early morning day dream . . .


Maybe you have some tried and tested bread machine recipes that are rather more successful than this one? I would love to hear about them!

Easter Market Cake Stall

If you follow me on Twitter you'll know that I have been a busy bunny this week making lots of lovely scrummy things for a cake stall at The Shambles Easter Market in Newent. Indeed, at 10pm last night I was still decorating gingerbread men and printing off little price cards...

The weather was not promising - last time I checked the forecast it looked like a hat,scarf and fingerless mitten kinda day. When we woke up this morning it looked more like it was gonna be a wellies and umbrella kinda day.

Actually, if I'm really honest, it looked like a 'forget about the market and spend the day under the duvet' kinda day...

But all those muffins, gingerbread men, bags of  fudge and coconut ice were all packed up and ready to go. So go we did...

A suprising combination...

Mmmmmmmuffins!

My attempts at vegetable growing have not exactly been 100% successful - I've lost three of my tomato plants to blight and a lot of strawberries to slugs and the promised heatwave gave way to rain, rain and more rain so what tomatoes and peppers I do have are still quite small and nowhere near ripe. One plant, however has done spectacularly well - my courgette has been producing in abundance so we have had courgette in stirfries, courgette soup, roasted courgette etc etc. In my quest to find something different to do with courgettes I found a recipe for courgette muffins - I kid you not!

And suprisingly - they are yummy!

So for those of you who also have a surplus of courgettes - here it is. If you grate them/chop them up really fine nobody need ever know they are in there...

Pre-heat oven to 190-200c/gas 5-6 and prepare muffin tin.

In a large bowl sift together 280g plain flour, 2tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda. 1/2tsp salt, 2tsp ground cinnamon and 3tbs cocoa powder.

In a medium sized bowl beat and egg with a fork. Add 125g soft brown sugar, 90ml milk, 2tsp vanilla essence, 90ml vegetable oil and 350g (approx 3-4 medium sized) finely grated courgette - no need to peel unless you want to avoid green flecks in the finished muffin. stir well.

Pour the wet mixture into the dry and stir until combined. Batter will be lumpy but no dry flour should be visible.

Spoon into tin - should make 11 or 12 big muffins - and bake for approx 20mins.

Enjoy!!

mm mmm mmmmmmm!