My favourite flavour for anything sweet is chocolate orange. Always has been, always will be. For my birthday last year we visited the Blue Mountains, a stunning part of New South Wales surrounded by amazing bush – and amazing food.
I bought some dark chocolate and orange rocky road from an exquisite chocolate providore. I stashed it away when I got home and forgot about it – until last night. I tried to scoff the lot but the Hungry Dad, who has bat hearing when it comes to sweets being unwrapped – managed to get a taste.
I found a recipe for a chocolate orange cake on a lovely site called The Chocoholic Baker – see it here: http://www.thechocoholicbaker.com/2015/10/chocolate-orange-cake.html
I made it immediately and I have to say, the sweet aromas emanating from the oven would have had sugar-free/dairy-free/gluten-free/paleo peeps salivating.
As usual I made a few changes: I used self-raising rather than plain flour, omitted salt, reduced the sugar and also reduced the amount of chocolate.
I must say, this was one messy baking operation. I have a workhorse KitchenAid food processor but even it struggled with the amount of ingredients. Next time I would soak the dried dates in the water and process them separately so as to avoid the mess-on-the-bench situation I had…
The original recipe called for a 23cm round tin but all my round tins are 20cm. I filled the tin about two thirds of the way full then used the excess batter to make four large cupcakes.
These cupcakes went sent with Miss8 to our elderly neighbour, while the cake was sent to work with the Hungry Dad, who collected donations for MSF in exchange for a slice. See more about the incredible work of MSF here: http://www.msf.org.au
GATHER:
115g butter, softened
½ cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1 whole orange, washed and chopped into cubes
1 cup dates, chopped
¾ cup water
½ teaspoon baking soda
2 cups self-raising flour
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
150g dark chocolate, chopped
LET’S GET TO IT:
Preheat oven to 180°C and grease a 23cm round cake tin then line the bottom with non-stick baking paper.
In bowl of electric mixer beat butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, scrapping down sides with spatula after each addition.
In a food processor blitz the dates, water and bicarb until just combined. Scrape out and place in a bowl, then put diced orange in processor. When orange no longer has large chunks visible remove to dates bowl and stir together thoroughly.
Add the orange/date mixture to the butter mixture and fold in the flour and vanilla Pour into the cake tin and insert chocolate chunks into the cake, sinking them into the batter with a bread and butter knife.
Bake for 40-50 minutes and leave in tin to cool. When cold remove to wire rack.
To serve dust with sifted icing sugar. I used rose petals from the garden to decorate mine.
the hungry mum 
Beautiful 🙂
Thank you Monika 😃
Beautiful!
Thank you x
Your photography is fantastic. I always love the way you set up your pics. 🙂
Oh, thank you so much! Santa brought me a very swish camera for Xmas so I am trying to figure out how to work the damn thing!
How fun! It looks like you’re getting along very well! 🙂
haha! thanks but I am absolutely wearing my L plates 🙂
😊
Beautiful! Well worth the mess.
Thanks! A little mess is just life, really 😄
Nice;) I love chocolate and orange together.
Me too – a match made in food heaven 😁
Love the rose petal touch!
Thank you! All my roses are drooping in this awful Sydney heat so I thought I may as well do something with them 🙂
wow this looks delicious!!
Cheers, it is a keeper of a recipe.
This does indeed look like a wonderful cake. I hope your DH’s co-workers agreed and MSF, a fantastic charity, benefitted.
Yum! That looks so good. I love the way you decorated it.
http://clairneriah.com/
Thanks so much 🙂
It looks amazing!
https://asparklingjourney.wordpress.com/
Gosh, thank you!