Chocolate Orange Cake 

I decided to give this a try when I had nothing better to do, and it turned out pretty great so I thought I’d share the recipe!

What you need:

• 250g chocolate – if you like super rich cake go with dark chocolate, I used a mix of milk and dark

• 200g caster sugar

• 200g unsalted butter – plus some extra to grease the cake tins

• 2 oranges – the zest and the juice

• 5 eggs

• 200g self-raising flour

• 1 tsp baking powder

• 150g cocoa powder

• 200 ml double cream

What to do:

• Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease or line 2 sandwich tins (around 20cm)

• Melt 50g of chocolate in a bowl over some simmering water

• Cream together the butter and sugar until it’s light and not lumpy. Add the orange zest and the orange juice plus the melted chocolate.

• Beat the eggs one at a time and slowly add them to the rest of the ingredients. Mix well.

• Sift in the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder and fold gently (so it doesn’t go everywhere) until everything is combined.

• Divide evenly in the two sandwich tins and bake for 25-30 minutes.

• While the cakes are cooking, make the ganache icing.

• Warm the double cream in a saucepan on a low heat – don’t boil it. Remove from the heat, stir in the rest of the chocolate and just leave it to melt.

• Once the chocolate has melted, stir the ganache and leave it to cool for a few hours.

• When the cakes and the ganache are cool you can ice the whole thing. Sandwich with the ganache and then use the rest to ice the top of the cake.

• Decorate how you like – I used white chocolate shavings but the ganache will be shiny when it’s set so works on its own if you can make it neat enough!