A few weeks ago now I took on the task of baking my Dad’s birthday cake – so it had to be good – no pressure!
Both my parents love dark chocolate so started looking for recipes when I found a great looking Dark Chocolate and Orange Cake recipe on the BBC Good Food website – such good recipes on there! With Terry’s Chocolate Orange being a staple at our family Christmases, this recipe was a no-brainer.
So, I bought all of the ingredients, but when it came down to begin baking, I was reading through the method, when it dawned on me, this could either go really well, or really bad. One, I have never added a whole blended orange to a cake, and two, used such a large quantity of sunflower oil .
But I carried on, albeit anxious at how this may turn out especially as I’d only given myself the night before to bake this for the first time. But I boiled that orange and I blended it, and added it to the sunflower oil cake mixture, popped it in the oven and it was smelling good – well how can a mixture of chocolate and orange not smell good I guess!? It was going well…
Then it came to the chocolate ganache. For some reason, it just wasn’t blending right. But after some serious power stirring, which also doubled up as my exercise for the day, it was looking pretty good!
Once it had cooled, I decorated the cake with the ganache and some orange peel as I couldn’t find any candied orange (*tip – put the orange peel on at the last minute to keep it looking fresh) and it looked rather lovely!
So looking rather impressive (the cake) I took it round to my Mum & Dads eager for everyone to have a slice. Nervous that is was going to be a bit ‘bitty’ from the whole juiced orange, it was actually OK although very, very rich! Eaten cold – not that enjoyable, but warmed up and served with a dollop of cream or ice cream – delicious!
So I would definitely recommend this cake – just serve it warm with cream (probably my favourite of all serving suggestions!)
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