When I had made this cake, I had no idea that this would be one of my most loved recipes. I am absolutely overwhelmed by the amount to love you guys have shown to this cake over the years and you continue to love it to this date.
Chocolate and orange is one of my favourite flavour combinations. It has been so for many years and this is something that I can never get bored of. I love baking with chocolate and I love baking with citrus flavours and for me when you combine these two flavours, they create magic!
A sinfully chocolatey, decadent chocolate cake with a zing from oranges and a hum of citrus! Whats not to love here, am I right?
For this cake, I used Blood oranges but regular oranges will work pretty well too. Blood oranges are not that common in India, in fact I have found them just once in a grocery stores here in Bangalore. The other ingredients for this cake are quite common and can be found very easily in your home or at a grocery store.
This cake is very decadent, dense and slightly gooey, giving it that signature texture of a mud cake. This is one of my favourite cakes and one that is made with healthy ingredients too with no artificial flavours or colours. And remember, this cake will taste amazing with any kind of oranges.
I hope you guys give this cake a try. Do let me know your thoughts if give it a try and use the tag #vanillatrails so I can get to see your beautiful bakes!
Ingredients
1 cup - Wholewheat flour/Aata
1/2 cup - Whole almonds
1/2 cup - Greek yogurt
1/2 cup - Butter
1 cup - Powdered jaggery
150 gm - Dark chocolate
2 eggs
1/2 cup - Water
1 tsp - Instant coffee
3/4 tsp - Baking powder
1/2 tsp - Baking soda
1/4 tsp - Salt
Juice and zest of 1 blood orange
1 blood orange sliced thinly
Instructions
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Take 1/4 cup of the jaggery in a small pan and add the juice and zest of one orange.
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Cook it down on a medium flame until the mixture starts of thicken and resembles a thin jam.
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Set it aside to cool completely.
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In a food processor or mixer grinder, take the almonds and the flour and process it into a fine powder and set it aside.
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In a double boiler or in microwave, melt your chocolate along with the butter, stirring occasionally.
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Once the chocolate is completely melted, let it cool for around 5 minutes.
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Add in the remaining jaggery to the melted chocolate and butter mixture until it is evenly combined.
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By this time, the chocolate mixture would have cooled slightly.
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Add one egg at a time and give it a thorough mix in between, adding the second egg once the first egg is combined fully into the batter.
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Now add in the greek yogurt, the orange jam (made using the first few steps of this recipe) and mix everything until evenly combined.
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In a separate saucepan, bring the water to a gentle boil and add in the instant coffee and take it off the heat.
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In a separate bowl, sieve in all the dry ingredients.
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Add half of the dry ingredients into the chocolate batter and fold it until all the dry flour is evenly incorporated into the batter.
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Now add the hot water and coffee mixture into the batter and combine evenly.
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Add the remaining dry ingredients and fold it gently until you have an even and smooth batter.
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In a greased and parchment lined baking pan, place some slices of blood orange along the bottom and along the walls.
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Bake this cake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees Celsius for around 45-55 minutes until a skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean.
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Let the cake cool completely in the baking pan before un-moulding.
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This is an upside down cake so serve it with the bottom side up!
Notes
- Use a high percentage, bitter chocolate for this recipe. I had used a 90% bitter chocolate for this cake. You can use one anywhere between 70% to 90%. There is enough sweetness in the recipe to mellow the bitterness. Orange flavour in the batter also aid nicely here.
- The flour here will help to grind the almonds evenly and into a fine powder, absorbing the excess oil that releases from grinding it.
- Shifting all the dry ingredients is important because the ground almond can get lumpy. Getting rid of these lumps in the batter is very difficult. Shifting all the ingredients before hand ensures an even and smooth batter.
- If you are melting chocolate in a microwave, make sure to do it in small bursts and take out the bowl and give it a mix every 30 seconds. This will prevent the chocolate or butter from burning and will give you an even result.
- Grease the baking pan generously and line the base and the walls with parchment paper.
- Slice the oranges thinly, well, as thinly as you can without hurting any of your fingers. You can then cut some into halves, some into quarters. This will make for a prettier pattern on top of the cake.
- When placing the orange slices on the walls of the baking pan, reserve thinner and smaller slices for the walls. These are easier to stick to the walls when you press lightly against the parchment paper.
- The pieces on the wall may not stay in place. Take help from someone in family to hold some of these pieces in place as you pour the cake batter into the baking pan.
- I used a 7 inch pan for this cake, to give it some height. If you are using a bigger pan, the cake may be done slightly sooner. So check once at 40 minutes.
