Chocolate Orange Cake

Well our friend is off out of the country so we've decided to bake her a cake!!! A chocolate orange cake!!! Well a three tiered choc orange cake haha!!


So firstly to make the sponge part of the cake you need these


Ingredients:
3 Eggs
Self Raisin Flour
Margarine
Caster Sugar
1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
100g Cocoa Powder
1 Teaspoon Orange Essence
50 Ml Milk


To Measure out the Ingredients weigh the Eggs, whatever the eggs weigh measure the Flour, Sugar and Margarine to the same weight (so if the eggs weigh 200g measure the flour, sugar and margarine to 200g)


This will make one Normal Sized Cake but because we made a 3 tiered one we made this same batter again for the other two tiers and because they were smaller the second batter worked fine for two more tiers.


For The Buttercream icing you'll need these


Ingredients:
150g Unsalted Butter
Icing Sugar
Cocoa Powder
Few Drops Orange Essence


Extra things you may need:


Large Mixing Bowl
Medium Mixing Bowl
Electric Mixer
Spatula
Palet Knife
10" Round baking tin (we generally use our spring form tin) I suppose you could make a square cake if you have a square tin!!!




To make the Sponge Cake 


Beat the margarine and sugar in a large mixing bowl using your electric mixer. Keep going until the mixture is creamy.


Next Break the 3 eggs into the mixture, add the flour, baking powder, cocoa powder, orange essence and milk.


Mix all the ingredients together until everything is combined.


The mixture when fully combined should be able to when lifted with a spoon just drop back into the bowl without any force being used.


Get your spatula now and slowly spoon out the mixture into your baking tin, i like to use a spatula because you can really scrape out every last drop of the mixture!! Level out the mixture and pop it in your pre heated oven for 20-25 mins or until the cake is fully cooked. Cooking times will vary depending on the size of your baking tin and oven so just keep an eye on it!


A small tip is to insert a sharp knife sideways into the centre of the cake if it comes out clean your cake is done :D!!!


Now we made a 3 tiered cake so to make the other two tiers use the same ingredients again and the same instructions again but you'll need two smaller baking tins for this and then when you have the mixture made just spoon out the mixture between the two tins. The smaller tins will cook a little bit quicker so just keep an eye on them.

Now this is the three tiers before i assembled them.. i will admit that i had a few little problems... im very impatient and didnt wait for the two larger ones to cool properly and they broke when i was taking them outta the tin!!! But sure it was grand pieced them back together and they get covered in icing anyways!!!!


So to make the icing:


Ingredients:
100g unslated butter
Cocoa
Icing Sugar
1teaspoon Orange Essence


Now this is nice and easy make sure the butter is soft your going to beat together the butter icing sugar, cocoa powder and the orange essence.


Use as much Icing sugar and cocoa powder as you want... i find its all about how sweet you like your icing, i use just enough so the butter taste is gone! Anyway keep mixing until its a nice creamy icing!!


Now that makes enough icing to cover one cake... Double that to make enough icing for the three tiers if you going for that!


Lastly we needed to put our three tiers together just sit them on top of each other making sure theyre centered.


Icing is easy enough if you have a palet knife i tried it once with just a normal spoon... mistake!!! it looked sooo bad!!! but it's great with a palet knife. So just spread the icing around lightly and evenly!! I get very bored doing this so i tend not to leave it perfect!! and last night I had literally 5 minutes to ice this cake... Didn't do to badly!!! We got some Orange Jellys then and decorated around the edges!!


So this is the finished products

Thats the two pics i took of it!! You can see that the cake started in the middle of the silver cake plate but as i was driving over to my friends it slid nearly off it!!! My Fault!!!! I took some corners to fast for a cake!! Woops!!!


It was YUMMY!!!! our friend who's leaving LOVED it!!!! So it was nice to give her a treat before she heads off!!!




Anyways!!  If you read the blog from start to finish good look to ya haha!!! This is a long enough entry!!! But seriously this recipe is SOOOOOOO easy!!!! Takes bout 2 hours to make the 3 tiered one... but like an hour would do for a normal sized one!!


Any questions about anything! Or if you feel i left any stages out leave me a comment :D!!!


Thanks
The Dereks