Tag Archives: Orange

Smells and tastes better than it looks – Orange Chocolate and Cinnamon Cake

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Orange, Cinnamon Chocolate Cake

This rather messy looking cake, smells and tastes so wonderful because it is full of the warming scents of Orange, Cinnamon Spice and Chocolate.

Having found two 20cm spring form cake tins, this would make a simple sponge layered cake with a thickly indulgent butter cream icing.

Ingredients for the Orange Chocolate cake:

200g Caster Sugar

200g softened butter

4tsp Orange Juice

5tsp Coca Powder

1 tsp Ground Cinnamon Powder

3 Beaten Eggs

200g Plain Flour

2 tsp Baking Powder and the Zest of 2 large Seville Oranges

Orange Marmalade (for the filling)

For the Butter Cream filling:

(I have made this using a Sunflower Margarine as my hubby doesn’t get on well with Cows Milk, and used a dash of Orange Juice)

Icing Sugar (about twice the volume to the butter)

Butter or Marge

Pinch of Salt

Orange Zest

1 tablespoon of Milk/Orange Juice to taste and loosen the consistency of the filling to your desired consistency

To make:

Preheat oven to 180 degrees

Mix together the softened butter and sugar until the mixture is light and fluffy. I mixed it together with a spoon rather than used an electric whisk.

Heat orange juice and then mix in 4 tablespoons of the Coca Powder to form a paste and add to the Sugar and Butter mixture, add the rest of the Coca Powder into the mixture and mix until all the ingredients are combined.

Beat in the 3 whisked eggs a little at a time until the mixture has combined to form a batter like mixture.

In a bowl add in the Strong Flour, Baking Powder Cinnamon and Grated Zest of Orange and combine. Sift this mixture into the batter like mixture and gently fold into the mixture until the two have combined into a thick cake mix.

Divide evenly between 2 Cake Tins (20cm wide). I have lined these with Grease proof paper, to help ease the cake out of the tins.

Bake in the oven for about 25-30 minutes. You’ll know the cake is ready when you put a skewer through and it comes out clean.

Cool the cakes on a baking rack.

I found a tip in one of Delia’s recipe books about how to remove cakes from a spring form cake tin. Put the cake on top of a tin can and push the side of the cake tin down, it should slide off the cake, leaving the cake on the base. Use a pallet knife and gently remove from the base of the tin.

Put a tea towel over the baking rack so that you don’t get lines on the cake. (I didn’t do this bit as I thought the lines would be inside the middle of the cake.

It will take about 20 minutes for the cake to cool completely.Slice of Orange Chocolate Cake with Cinnamon

For the Buttermilk filling – I made this orangey by grating the zest off another orange and adding this to the marge. Combine in Icing sugar and keep mixing/adding icing sugar until you get the consistency you want for the cake. I added a splash of orange juice as well as some Soya Milk to make the consistency a little gooey.

Once you have the filling made, spread a thin layer of Marmalade on each side of the cakes and spread the buttermilk filling on top. Sandwich the cake together, dust icing sugar on top and the cake is ready to serve.

For people who like to decorate, the cake would look great with butter icing on top and some of those jellied orange segments or fresh oranges to decorate. But I was too eager to eat the cake, so were the kids, so it just got a coating of icing sugar before being served for last night’s tea.

Hmmm delicious!

Idiot proof Orange and Almond cupcakes

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Orange and Poppy Seed Cupcake

For anyone that can’t follow baking instructions (me) these cupcakes turned out to be idiot proof.

I had the following ingredients in my cupboard and thought I’d make some tasty little cakes.

Some of the Ingredients for Orange Poppy Seed Cupcakes

Ingredients:

125g Butter (softened)

2/3 cup soft brown sugar (or Caster Sugar)

1 large Orange (grate the rind and juiced)

2 eggs at room temperature

1 cup self-raising flour

3/4 cup ground almonds

Some of the ingredients for Orange & Poppy Seed Cupcakes1 tablespoon of Poppy Seeds (optional)

1 tablespoon of Popping Candy (optional)

Icing Sugar (for dusting)

I thought I would make some simple cupcakes for an afternoon / tea time treat.

My daughter arrived home from school early today and I was just assembling the ingredients when she asked if she could help with the baking.

The instructions for cupcakes are so simple, as we have made these so many times, I didn’t pay too much attention to actually reading it properly.

I somehow managed to put the Self raising flour and sugar together in the bowl while I was measuring out the ingredients.

What I should have done was creamed the butter and sugar together along with the eggs and the grated orange.Orange and Poppy Cupcakes (8)

However, when I’m baking with my kids, I am distracted by their questions and excitement at the steps involved in cake baking. This time the distraction took the form of what additional ingredients we should add in the mix to make it our own (Popping Candy) and my personal favorite ingredient for cakes, Poppy Seeds, which gives a cake a bit of a crunchy texture.

Also, using brown sugar was a better alternative than caster sugar, if you have this instead, as it’s not so processed and will give the final cupcakes a softer caramel flavour.  As the sugar was lumpy, I asked my daughter to separate the sugar and we added this into the flour.Eggs and Butter with Grated Orange

So, instead of creaming the butter and sugar together, we mixed the butter with the eggs along with the grated orange zest which produced a very runny looking batter.

By this point I realised my mistake, it would be impossible to separate the sugar from the flour and combine this into the batter mixture, so I got my trusty electric hand-whisk and mixed the batter into the sugary flour instead.

The resulting mixture formed the cake mixture that looked about right. Into this we added the orange juice (1/4 cup) and the almond flour, this was gently folded into the mix, along with the poppy seeds and popping candy.

Batter for Orange and Poppy Seed CupcakesOnce these ingredients were combined, we put them into the little cupcake cases into the cake tins. This recipe makes about 12-14 generous sized cupcakes.

I love cupcake cases as they’re so easy, no greasing the tins and no worries or hassle of whether the cake will come out of the baking tin at the end of baking, so we use the paper cases a lot.

Added to the fact that the individual cakes are easy for packed lunches, they really are a mini cake perfect to take anywhere.

Poppy Seeds and Popping Candy in Cake BatterWe put the tray of cupcakes into a pre-heated oven on 180 c, and let them bake for 15-18 minutes (checking at about 14 mins, to see if they were cooked as we have a fan oven, things tend to cook faster) Use a skewer or knife to put into the cupcake and if it comes out clean, they’re cooked.

Cake Mix in cupcake casesReally you are supposed to wait until the cupcakes have cooled before dusting with icing sugar.

By this time, my youngest had arrived from school too and both kids were now not content with just licking the remaining mixture from the mixing bowl as the smell of the orangey almond cakes had filled the kitchen and dining room.

They wanted to eat them straight away, so we dusted the cupcakes in the tins straight from the oven. (You are supposed to let them cool before dusting the icing sugar)

Orange and Poppy Cupcakes (1)Pretty much fool proof as they turned out pretty good in spite of the fact that we forgot to cream the sugar and butter and added a few optional extras of popping candy and poppy seeds.

I had just enough time to put a few on a small plate and take the pictures for this post before they disappeared.