Chocolate-Orange Cake

This weekend’s baking mission: revamp the recipe I have for Mayonnaise Chocolate Cake.  After doing some reading for inspiration, I decided to enhance it with an orange flavor.  Here’s how it looked at the beginning of the night:

And after the event, a small potluck, was over:

This version of the mayonnaise cake came out a lot better than my first attempt. (More acidic elements and/or slightly more sugar = no residual taste of baking soda.) Everyone had a large slice, and kept sneaking more nibbles as the evening wore on. 🙂

Recipe

– 1 cup sugar (I used dark brown sugar, but white sugar works too.)
– 2 cups flour (I used cake flour, but all-purpose flour also works.)
– 4 (level-ish) tbsp cocoa powder
– 2 tsp baking soda
– pinch of salt
– 1 tbsp orange zest (that’s an estimation; I zested two medium-sized oranges.)

Sift together dry ingredients. Mix together wet ingredients. Combine dry ingredients with wet, then add:

– 1 (scant-ish) cup mayonnaise
– 1/2 cup water
– 1/2 cup orange juice (and if you’re me you add a dash of lemon juice just because)
– 1 tsp vanilla extract

Line two 8″ cake pans with parchment paper, split the batter between them, and bake for 20-25 minutes at 350.

For the topping, I made a chocolate buttercream frosting and added an orange flavor to this element as well by adding 1-1/2 tsp orange zest (i.e. the zest of half a large orange) and 3 tbsp of orange juice (the juice of half a large orange).

End result:

Thumbs up.

I’m also practicing making brownies and blondies. Haven’t mastered them yet, but here’s a picture of a couple of early prototypes.

Related Articles

• Flourless Chocolate Orange Cake – Nigella (comfycook.wordpress.com)
• Jamie Schler: Decadent Chocolate Spice Cake for the Holidays (huffingtonpost.com)

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