Chocolate and Orange Cake

There’s nothing quite like cake is there? Problem is, cake is pretty bad for you, this cake changes all that… it’s even worse! It was borne of an evening at a friend’s house at which there was a fabulous chocolate orange cake of which I had only one slice, so I made another. It is a little different though because this recipe uses oil instead of butter/stork which makes the batter extra moist, at the cost of at least one artery per slice.

The trick with a cake like this is to not hold back with the orange, it is, after all, a chocolateandorange cake. Having both flavours very prominent is the key to making this cakeperfect. In addition to this, one must remember that if some bloke called Terry comes round asking about this chocolate and orange cake, it’s yours and not his! This recipe will take about an hour and a half to make, that’s the price you pay when using oil.

Cake:

Ingredients:

• 230g self-raising flour
• 320g caster sugar, granulated will probably work
• 50g cocoa powder
• 3 eggs
• 250ml sunflower oil
• pinch of salt
• 2 oranges

Method:

Pre-heat the oven to 190C and prepare a loaf tin with baking parchment and butter. Sift the flour and cocoa powder together and mix until uniform. To this add the salt and sugar, stir.

Take the oranges and peel with a vegetable peeler. Remove the pith off each slice with a sharp knife. Boil these peelings in water for a minute or so. When this is done sieve and rinse with cold water. Cut each into thin slices, roughly chop 3/4 of these and keep the rest for decoration.

Beat the eggs in a large bowl, to these add the oil and chopped orange peel. Add the wet to the dry until combined without lumps.

Pour the batter into the loaf tin and cook for an hour and ten minutes, or until a knife comes out clean. Turn out onto a cake rack and leave untilabsolutelycold.

Icing:

Ingredients:

• 180g icing sugar
• 100g soft cheese, low-fat
• good shake of cocoa powder