Dark Chocolate and Orange Cake

I'm really not in the mood for cooking at the moment. Or, rather, I'm not in the mood for deciding what to cook! Once the decision is made I'm quite happy to get on with it, but I'm finding it difficult to make those decisions. FB suggested this Dark Chocolate and Orange Cake form '101 Cakes and Bakes', a Good Food book (also available on the website). This fitted in with the low saturated fat baking I'm doing at the moment, so I went along with her proposal. Her alternative suggestion was a healthy oat muffin from the same book, which didn't sound so good!

The cake itself was simplicity to make although I was a little concerned about the amount of oil in the recipe and had to check the book against the website, in case it was a misprint. I didn't have a Seville orange (who does at this time of year?) so I used an ordinary medium sized eating orange instead. There was also a delay while I boiled the orange for 30 minutes, so this really isn't a cake you can make on the spur of the moment.

No problems with a sinking cake this time, either, even though the method was quite similar to the previous cake, which collapsed so spectacularly.

I didn't have any cream to make a ganache, so used my fall-back recipe for a chocolate glaze, which just gave a thin coating to the top of the cake. Hubs thought the cake looked like an Artexed ceiling, but I'm not listening to that sort of criticism - the glaze did the job, quickly! The glaze is made by heating 100g plain chocolate and 20g butter in a bowl over simmering water. Once melted remove from the heat and stir in 1 rounded tablespoon of golden syrup and 1 tablespoon of milk. Cool to a spreading consistency before using.

The cake  had a dense, moist texture with just a hint of orange. I think a Seville orange would have given a stronger flavour than the eating orange, although adding the grated zest from a second orange might have upped the orange factor a bit.. This is a good 'everyday' cake to add to my 'baking with oil' repertoire.