Hello hungry peoples,
Well this is it people…..I promised you cake and now I am delivering. This is my version of the cake from Michele’s birthday dinner (that I wrote about last week), a decadent blood orange chocolate cake. I had some guidance from Michele to try to match the magnificence of her cake. The use of blood oranges makes this cake extra special but normal oranges will suffice (especially now the season for blood oranges is finished). The cake is essentially a brownie mix so this is one crazy rich fudgey cake with a hint of jaffah. It is amazeballs.
Warning: This recipe makes one massive brick of a super dense fudgey cake. More cake than any person should really have but it would be perfect for a dinner party with lots of friends. You could also halve the cake ingredients for a flatter version but that seems wrong. Go all in people!
Blood Orange Chocolate Cake
Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 60 minutes
Total time: 1 hour 15 minutes
Yield: 8 serves
Calories per serving: 676
Ingredients
- 400 g dark cooking chocolate
- 2 cup plain flour
- 2 cup castor sugar
- 400 g butter
- 6 eggs
- 1 cup cocoa
- 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips
- 50 ml Cointreau (orange liqueur)
Orange Syrup
- 1 cup castor sugar
- 4 blood oranges
To serve: ice cream or whipped cream (the cake is so rich it really needs something with it).
Cooking Directions
- Take your eggs out of the fridge and let them sit and get to room temperature. The general rule is to do this for any baked good as it makes the mixture integrate better.
- Preheat oven to 180 °C.
- Brush a large cake tin with melted butter and line with baking paper.
- For the blood orange topping and sugar syrup, squeeze the juice from 1-2 blood oranges to get 1/2 cup juice. Thinly slice the remaining blood oranges.
- Stir 1 cup of castor sugar and 1/2 cup blood orange juice in a saucepan over medium heat until sugar dissolves.
- Add blood oranges slices and simmer until tender.
- Arrange cooked orange slices on the base of the cake pan.
- Pour half of the sugar syrup over the slices and set aside.
- Put 400 g of cooking chocolate and butter into a microwave proof bowl and melt. This usually takes about 1:30 minutes. Make sure you stir it around a bit throughout. This will make it melt quicker and start to incorporate.
- Once everything has melted set it aside and let it cool to room temperature.
- Combine your 6 eggs and 2 cups castor sugar. Whip them together on the highest mixer speed for about 4 minutes. You want them really fluffy. Almost double in volume.
- Fold in cooled chocolate mixture with 50 ml of Cointreau.
- Combine the 2 cups flour and 1 cup cocoa in a bowl and mix with a fork to get rid of any large chunks. Add them to the mixture and fold in a little bit. It will still look dusty and unmixed.
- Add the mixture to your cake pan and bake for about 60 minutes. Turn it out, drizzle the remaining sugar syrup all over and let it cool slightly. It is delicious warm. That’s it, your done!
Blood orange chocolate cake
Difficulty: Medium