Chocolate and Orange Cake

I wanted to make a sandwich cake for OH's birthday, but also wanted it to look a bit different. Had a large orange to use up, so decided to use it in the cake and to decorate it.  Recently I saw a tv chef add a flake bar to a chocolate cake, so thought I'd try the same, instead of using cocoa or melted chocolate.

Cake:
225sr flour
175g soft butter
175g caster sugar
grated rind of a large orange
3 eggs
2 crushed Flake bars
4 tbspn milk

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Orange and Chocolate Mini Loaves

Last weekend we went to stay with our daughter and visited Bluewater shopping centre. There's a great John Lewis store there, and I love browsing in their kitchenware. A few weeks ago, Phil, from the great As Strong As Soup  blog, posted a 'financier' recipe and I hunted everywhere for my financier tin to make some, but couldn't find it, so when I saw a mini loaf one in John Lewis, I bought it. I don't think it's exactly the same size as a financier tin?
We were given a gift pack of several bars of Lindt chocolate, one of them being their Intense Orange bar, so back home I decided to make some little chocolate loaves with orange in my new tin. They're not financiers as they have no almonds in them, but they're good anyway. The original recipe made 6, so I doubled it up.
To add to the chocolate flavour I made a chocolate ganache, and found some orange and lemon jelly slices in the baking cupboard and used the orange ones to decorate the top.

Preheat oven 200C/gas 6 and grease a 6 hole financier or mini loaf tin [or you could use a 450g loaf tin - a 1lb one in old measures]

Put 110g of soft butter, 110g of caster sugar and the zest of a medium orange in a bowl and beat it till nice and fluffy. Add 2 beaten eggs a bit at a time and mix together well.  Sift 75g of sr flour and 25g of cocoa together and add to the batter. Fold in then add 2 tbspn of orange juice and mix this in.
Spoon into the tins and bake for 15-20 mins till firm to touch.
Leave in the tin to cool for about 10 mins then turn onto a wire rack.
To make the ganache, put 50g of orange chocolate and 3 tbspn of double cream in a bowl over simmering water and melt gently, and stir together till nice and glossy [use a wooden spoon].
Spoon some ganache over each mini loaf and decorate with an orange slice.

You get a double hit of chocolate with the cocoa and the orange chocolate topping. The cake has a good soft texture, just the right amount of orange flavour, and is just the right size for an afternoon treat.

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Chocolate and honey madeleines

Am off today to look after one of our grandsons, so decided to leave something in the cake tin for himself.

Madeleines seemed a good choice, as I brought several tins back from France, and they've remained unused.

The recipe makes 20 madeleines.

150g dark chocolate
70g butter
5 eggs, yolks and whites separated
125g caster sugar
4 tbspns honey
150g plain flour

Preheat oven 190C/375F/gas5

Melt the chocolate and butter and leave to cool.
Beat the egg yolks with the sugar till they're pale and thick.
Then add the chocolate mixture, the flour and the honey, beating quickly between each one.
Beat the egg whites, but not too thickly, then add these to the mixture, folding in.
Put the mixture in the fridge for at least an hour.
Grease the tins well, as madeleines stick!
Put a heaped teaspoon of mixture into each hole.
Bake for 8-10 mins.

Let them cool for a bit in the tin, before putting them on a wire rack.

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Chocolate cake with butterscotch and speculoos

My lovely Dutch friend sent me some goodies recently, including some of my favourite speculoos biscuits. I wanted to use them in a cake of some sort, and found this recipe in a French magazine.
No cooking is needed for the cake.

125g speculoos biscuits
4 dried figs, finely chopped
4 dates, finely chopped
2 tbspns sultanas
60g melted butter
200g milk or plain chocolate - broken into small pieces
15cl cream
2 packets of Werther's originals

22cm cake tin - preferably a silicone mould

Crush the biscuits and mix them with the dried fruit. Press the mixture into the bottom of the tin/mould and put it in the fridge to harden.
Break the chocolate up into a bowl.
Put the cream in a small saucepan and bring to the boil, then pour it over the chocolate.
Stir well till the mixture is nice and smooth. Cool.
Take the base mixture out of the fridge and pour the chocolate over, then put it back in the fridge again to harden [for about 2 hours].
When the cake's ready, put the Werther's into a polythene bag or teatowel and crush them with a rolling pin. Sprinkle them over the top of the chocolate.

Not a very good photo - this is the top of the cake. Am still having problems with my camera.

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Easter cake

We don't like marzipan, so our Easter cake is usually a chocolate one. We're off to Suffolk to our son tomorrow, and my contribution is this chocolate cake.

This is the recipe I use most often. It has oil instead of butter.

190g sr flour
2 tbspns cocoa powder
1 tspn bicarb. of soda
1 tspn baking powder
150g caster sugar
150ml milk
150ml veg. oil [I used sunflower]
2 tbspn golden syrup
2 beaten eggs

Oven 160C/gas3
Grease and line 2 x20cm sandwich tins
Sift flour, cocoa, sugar, bicarb and baking powder into a bowl.
Beat the milk, oil, eggs and syrup together and add to the bowl.
Beat the mixture till well mixed.
Bake in the oven for 30-35 mins. [My cakes took 45 mins in my gas oven.]
Turn onto a wire rack and leave to cool.

For the icing you can use a chocolate butter cream, a ganache or this one, which I find isn't too sickly.

50g butter
4 tbspn sieved cocoa powder
3 tbspns milk
150g sieved icing sugar

Melt butter in a pan and add the cocoa. Stir and heat gently for about a minute.

Stir in the icing sugar and milk.
Take it off the heat and beat it well, then leave to cool and thicken.
There's enough icing to sandwich the cakes together and to spread some on top.
I added chocolate eggs for my Easter cake.

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