thatseriousgirl: Orange and Chocolate Cake aka Jaffa Cake

"Imma make a cake tomorrow." I said to the girls as we were walking home from work.

"Vat vill you be making tomorrow?" The wonderful Mrs I asked me. Mrs I has a very thick Hungarian accent.

"I don't know." I replied thoughtfully.

I had been thinking about it all day and had hit up absolutely everything in my arsenal of food sites, all my the food blogs I frequent, my list of recipes to try on Facebook, Food52, taste.com, my collection of magazine clippings and nothing was enticing enough to try. I didn't have enough time to go shopping and buy anything else so I only had what was in my house. What to make, what to make?

I was browsing the internet when I thought, I want to make a jaffa cake, an orange and chocolate flavoured cake! A CAKE THAT HAD BOTH CHOCOLATE AND ORANGE IN IT. In my mind I had two thoughts, an orange scented light sponge coated in a chocolate ganache with candied orange slices on top or a dense chocolate cake with orange zest and juice baked inside and then doused in an orange sugar syrup.

I scoured the googles to find a recipe to inspire me. There was shit bugger all. All the recipes I found had weird stuff that I didn't have, like liquors, package orange jelly, cold mashed pumpkin, condensed milk or worse, didn't seem like it would work. So I decided to make up my own recipe!

You leave me no choice

First, I had to be consumed by doubt. I asked first Shishi, Yannikins, Dr H, VGirl, T., Lis., and L., what their thoughts on which cake I should make. Everyone but the contrary VGirl agreed that the latter of the two, the dense chocolate cake with orange juice/zest and the sugar syrup sounded like the better of the two. Yannikins thought of the little Mexican girl.

YEAH

L., was sending me lots of recipes and recommending stuff I didn't have. Shishi and Dr H., warned me that I should be careful of the balance of the sugar syrup since it could make the cake sickly sweet. They also wanted me to use dark chocolate and minimal sugar when I baked it. Dr H and Yannikins added that its pretty uncommon to see sugar syrups used on anything besides plain flavoured cakes and teacakes. Dr H was wondering why I asked Yannikins and Shishi when they don't know how to cook, but I told them that they know what they like and she agreed that Asians know what they like in a cake.

So I played around with my solid flourless chocolate and hazelnut cake, changed some of the ingredients around, added some juice, some zest, made up a syrup and bam baked it. I'm unsure if the reason why the cake batter solidified so greatly was because the chocolate cooled down too much, since most of the time I barely have the patience to allow it to cool down at all, or because I used way too much flour. It got very thick and claggy and I had to really enthusiastically fold the egg whites, so I think the cake could've been lighter and taller than what it turned out to be honest. I made a tester batch that puffed up beautifully so I think that had the majority of the egg whites in it.

It turned out very nicely I think. As a result of all the orange zest, it has a great fragrance especially when freshly baked but also as a cooled cake. Due to the high butter content its a very moist cake as well. The cake is also very fluffy despite this because of the folded egg whites. I don't think it needs any extra sugar as the syrup adds a lot extra. Mama Pham aka my mum gave me her stamp of approval when she tried some of this cake and said it smelt good, was rich and that it was just sweet enough and any sweeter and she wouldn't eat it. Its a great thing to have my mum's approval, she is highly critical of a lot of food.

Inside of the cake.

I used navel oranges in this cake because that's all I had. Valencia or any other juicing orange would be preferable because of their increased flavour/juice production. Since you're eating the zest, organic would be the way to go here. A bitter dark chocolate would be the way to go as well. You can also bake the cake at 180 for 40 minutes if you have a well controlled temperature, but I would be extremely cautious about doing so, because if it overheats, you could have an ugly cake on hand.

I brought it into work and people were raving over how light it was, the fluffiness of the cake, its great moisture, its orange flavour and that it tasted exactly like a Jaffa should. I made it for Dr. H's parents as well when we went out with VGirl, Shishi and Yannikins. I later learnt that Dr. H's dad went to work with the rest of the cake and Yannikins parents mugged him for his cake as soon as he went home. I have now got his mum's recipe for chiffon cake. I also made this for my Boyfriend's parents who made lots of excuses to have it with tea and coffee.

Orange and Chocolate cake = JAFFA CAKE

Uses: pretending to be healthy, using up oranges

Ingredients for cake:
4 eggs, separated
200g of dark or milk cooking chocolate
150g of butter, cubed
1 cup of self raising flour
2 oranges worth of zest
1/2-3/4 cup of orange juice, depends on how good your oranges are
3/4 cup of sugar

Ingredients for orange juice sugar syrup
1 cup of orange juice
1/2 cup of sugar
1/2 cup of water

Compulsory loaf of bread in background

Instructions for cake
1. Cube your butter and break up your chocolate into small bits. Melt this all in a bowl, however you want, microwave, in a double boiler, just get it melted! I'm a fan of placing a bowl above boiling water, and allow the heat to melt it that way.

So shiny

2. Meanwhile, line a 20cm springform/normal cake tin with baking paper and separate your eggs into yolks and whites.

I couldn't find my other stainless steel mixing bowl

3. Zest your oranges, juice both of them and strain the juice. Eat the pulp, its good for you. Turn the oven to 150C.

We lost the rest of the citrus juicer a long time ago

4. When the chocolate melts, allow it to cool slightly while you make the rest of the cake.
5. Combine the yolks, sugar and zest. Beat until creamy, thick and pale.

Yes there are yolks under there

Is this upside down? Does it matter?

Oops almost forgot

6. Combine the chocolate and orange juice with the yolk mixture and stir until just combined.

It looks really gross somehow

Pretty

7. Sift the flour on top of this mixture, stir until combined.

Bleh

Chunky

Looking gooood~

8. Whisk your egg whites until you reach soft peaks, gently fold a third of the egg whites into the cake and then fold the remaining 2/3s.

Haha I forgot to take a picture of the final batter

8. Pour into your prepared cake tin and bake for at least an hour, resist the urge to open up the oven and flip it around or poke it with a skewer too early on.

Instructions for orange juice sugar syrup
1. Wait until about 5-10 minutes before the cake comes out of the oven. Mix all of the ingredients.

Add caption

2. Heat over a steady medium-low heat, get rid of any orange foam.

Weird orange foam! Scoop and throw away!

3. Take off the heat when it thickens to 1/3 or 1/2 of original volume, or slightly thick, depends on how you like your syrup, I like mine thick and almost caramelised.