The Ultimate Chocolate Orange Cake

I don’t often post a lot of recipes on here. I like to eat, I like to cook, but I’m not hugely accomplished in the kitchen and don’t always have a lot of time. But when Valentine’s Day loomed, I knew I had to surprise hubby with something he’d love…welcome The Ultimate Chocolate Orange Cake!

Now as I say, I’m not accomplished, so I totally followed a recipe for this one, but added in my own tweaks to make it to mine and hubby’s taste and maximise on the chocolatey-oranginess (that is a word!).

The bulk of the recipe is based on Mary Berry’s ‘Very best chocolate and orange cake’ but I added the following tweaks:

I used 75g of dark chocolate and 75g of milk chocolate for the icing (instead of just 150g dark chocolate) – we like it creamier and milky
To dress the cake at the end, I finished it with segments of Terry’s Chocolate Orange, instead of shavings of dark chocolate – again maximising on the chocolatey-oranginess

I won’t bore you by running through every stage of the recipe, because I think Mary Berry does it well enough 🙂

But here is some photographic evidence of my cooking, each step of the way…

Baking tins greased with butter and the bases lined with baking/grease-proof paper.

I’m a messy cook! But this is the bowl of ingredients mixed together for the sponges.

What’s left of my grated orange.

Mixture separated into 2 baking tins (20cm tins), just before they went in the oven.

Here’s what they looked like when coming out of the over. Now, as my over is fan-assisted, I cooked them for 20 mins. But when I turned them out onto the cooling rack, I realised the cake and mixture was still quite soft. So I think I should’ve put them in for 25 mins. Instead I popped them back in as they were for 5 mins.

Whilst they cooled, I prepped my chocolate for the icing – 1/2 milk, 1/2 dark.

Then disaster struck! The sponges didn’t seem cooked all the way through, despite me popping them back in the oven for 10 mins…perhaps my mixture was slightly out?! So I could only salvage one sponge…

Which, with my head held high and my chin up, I proceeded to spread with apricot jam! I would salvage this bloody cake if it’s the last thing I’d do…

Finishing off with the lovely icing and segments of Terry’s Chocolate Orange, here is the finished result (I made an eton-mess-style concoction with the destroyed half!).