Chocolate Orange Cake

It was the hubby's birthday on Friday and he's now the grand old age of 32. Let's do the maths... I'm 37 so he's five years younger than me which makes him my toy boy! It's no wonder I'm obsessed with beauty products and trying to keep myself looking young.

Anyway, I made him his first ever birthday cake. Well, the first birthday cake I've ever made for him.

Can you guess what sort of cake it was?! My chocolate orange cupcakes recipe is one of my most popular posts. Words can't describe how much I adore chocolate orange so I'll admit this cake was partly for me. For me the only thing better than chocolate cake is chocolate orange cake.

So I started to look for a recipe. And I looked... and I looked. Nothing. Not one single recipe for chocolate orange cake could be found in any of my recipe books. What's wrong with these people! There was a choc orange mousse cake in one book but that wasn't what I wanted.

So I decided to take my new favourite chocolate cake recipe and throw in some orange zest and juice. Simple. It did the job perfectly. 

It's rich and moist with a mega-chocolatey flavour plus that distinctive orange undertone. I used regular ganache but maybe next time I would try adding some orange flavour to that too. Is it even possible to add orange zest and juice to ganache? I don't know if it would work. Help me out if you know. Maybe I'll just give it a go and see what happens.

Chocolate Orange Cake

Serves 12

Preparation time 20 minutes

Cooking time 30 minutes

50g cocoa powder

6 tablespoons boiling water

3 large eggs

100g softened butter

275g caster sugar

50ml whole milk

175g self raising flour

1 rounded teaspoon baking powder

Zest and juice of 1 orange

Ganache

200g plain chocolate

100g milk chocolate

300ml double cream

1 whole Terry's chocolate orange

Preheat oven to 180C {350F} gas mark 4. Grease two 20cm {8inch} deep cake tins and line the bases with baking paper.

Sift the cocoa powder into a large bowl, add the boiling water and mix together until a smooth paste forms. Add the eggs, butter, sugar, milk, orange zest and juice and beat with a hand held electric mixer until fully combined. Sift in the flour and baking powder and beat again until the mixture becomes a smooth thickish batter.

Divide the mixture equally between the prepared tins and pop in the oven for 25-30 minutes. The cakes will be ready when a skewer instered in the middle comes out clean and when gently pressed with a finger, the cake springs back. Leave to cool in the tins for a few minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Make the ganache. Break or chop the chocolate into small pieces. Gently heat the cream in a saucepan until it starts to bubble, remove from the heat, then add the chocolate and stir like crazy until the mixture is completely melted and there are no chocolate lumps left. Leave to cool for about 2 hours until the mixture has thickened. 

Place one of the cakes onto a plate or cake board. Spread about 1/3 of the ganache onto the cake then place the other cake carefully on top and spread 1/3 of the ganache onto the top and smooth with a pallet knife. Then spread the rest of the ganache around the sides of the cake until it is fully covered. You should have enough ganache to give it a good thickish covering.

Decorate by placing the chocolate orange segments around the edge of the cake. {Try really hard not to eat the segments you have left over. Fail miserably!}