A Truly Great Pairing

You may have noticed that I casually overlooked Valentine's Day here on Happy Love Strawberry. Any February 14th post? Nooo. We don't have a 14th of February on this blog. No heart-shaped chocolate souffle sprinkle sundae gooey brownie cakes for two to share round here.
Actually that sounds pretty good. But no.

If I was going to bake something to represent my romantic endeavours, it would need to be something as bitter as I am, and so I'm sparing you from that. Instead, I'm going to celebrate a truly great pairing that I do appreciate. The old 'chocolate + orange = ♥' formula (yeah, that 'formula' may help you to understand why I'm so bad at maths. It apparently doesn't go down too well in exams).


I took this to our picnic the other day to help me and my friends celebrate our platonic love, and everyone seemed to agree that chocolate and orange go together like rama lama lama ke ding a de dinga a dong. Who's going to argue with that?

I don't make a lot of chocolate cake (I think I've mentioned that I prefer either chocolate OR cake) but this is a really good recipe as it's particularly moist though oddly, it doesn't look it in the sliced photo; I had to take that a couple of days after it was made as it was a leftover piece. Also this cake did NOT want to photo so you get a good chocolate hit.

Just what you need to sweeten yourself up when you're feeling bitter and resentful. I mean, hypothetically.

Chocolate Orange Layer Cake
Recipe from You magazine, 13th January 08
Makes 1 x 20cm cake

Cake:
225g butter
225g demerara sugar
175g self-raising flour
50g sifted cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp sea salt
4 eggs
100ml milk

Orange buttercream:
220g butter
220g icing sugar
zest of 2 oranges
2 tbsp Cointreau or orange juice
1 egg yolk
orange or yellow food colouring

1. Preheat oven to 190C/170C fan/375F/gas 5 and butter a 20cm x 9cm cake tin.

2. Cream all cake ingredients together (helpful if you have a kitchen aid or mixer or boyfriend to stir for you whatever here) until all smooth and mixed in, then transfer it to the cake tin, smooth the surface, and bake for about 45 mins or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. To be honest I only needed about 30-35 mins but I'm a bit paranoid about undercooking cakes - it's happened before - and I think it would have been moister if I'd taken it out earlier. Run a knife around the outside to loosen, and leave to cool.

3. For the buttercream, blend the butter, icing sugar and orange zest together in a big bowl and whack it around a bit until really pale and fluffy. Add the cointreau/juice and whisk for a minute longer, then the egg yolk and colouring and mix it all in until even. Naturally I chose cointreau, to drown my sorrows in alcohol.

4. Use a bread knife to slit the cake into three layers. Divide the filling into three then spread the bottom and middle layers with filling and whack the rest over the top. I spread it round the sides as well, cause I prefer it that way, though there wasn't really enough buttercream for that. You could decorate it with chocolate orange segments if you had a chocolate orange, but I didn't have anyone to buy me chocolate, so I just crumbled a flake bar over the top. Et voila!

Who am I kidding with the misery act? I'll take cake over romance any day.