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!