What might have been

This was on course to being a spectacular cake, and a worthy entrant for this month's We Should Cocoa challenge, which is to pair chocolate and mango in the same dish. That was, until it stuck in the bundt tin. The relics of the cake were very crumbly too, so I think my adaptations may have destabilised the recipe.

I was a little concerned about the low number of eggs in this recipe I found for Whole Orange Bundt Cake with Chocolate Ganache, as cake batter recipe of this size would normally have a minimum of 6 eggs, rather than the three used here, but assumed the puréed oranges would make up for this. As it turned out, I had to add milk to the batter to give a dropping consistency and allow all the flour to be incorporated.  My mini-chopper didn't purée the oranges to a smooth liquid, either - it was a coarse paste with little pieces of peel still visible, which I thought would add to the visual appeal of the cake. These factors combined with the addition of 100g of dried fruit may have meant the cake batter was still too dry if the fruit absorbed some of the moisture during cooking. This could explain the cake being very crumbly, and being in a bundt tin only made that problem seem more obvious, as it was easier for the cake to pull apart than be released properly from the tin.

The only reason I'm bothering to write up the cake is that it had a wonderful flavour. I added 60g dried chopped mango, 50g dried chopped mandarins and 100g chopped 74% chocolate to the basic recipe. The puréed raw orange gave the cake a fresh taste and the little pieces of dried fruit added texture and intense fruit flavours which married well with the chocolate.

Obviously I didn't waste chocolate ganache on the ruins of the cake, but had it been more successful, I think I would have added some sort of chocolate frosting to increase the chocolate hit.

This is a fantastic combination of flavours which I will carry on working with, together with the concept of using puréed raw orange in the cake for a fresh, strong flavour. Watch this blog!