Chocolate Orange Layer Cake Recipe & Festive Food Friday #3

Growing up, Terry’s Chocolate Orange always meant that the festive season had really arrived. There was nothing quite like cracking one of those blue boxes open, and if you got the orange core in the centre? Amazing. This cake is a celebration of those little blue boxes.

Firstly though, Kerry of KerryCooks.com and I loved seeing the Christmas recipes that bloggers have been sharing with us here each week. If you’re looking for some more festive recipes, you can see a round up of all of them over on Kerry’s blog here: Festive Food Friday Week 2. If you’d like to link up this week, please read how to below.

I originally posted this recipe almost two years ago as a way of using up leftover Christmas chocolate (leftover chocolate? Ha!). That feels like a blogging life time ago now, you can see the original post here: Chocolate Orange Layer Cake.

I still love this layer cake, wouldn’t it make a great alternative to a traditional Christmas cake? I made this recipe again for a friend’s birthday recently and I thought I’d take some new photos and post it again as hopefully I’ve improved my photos a little in the last couple of years. (Natural light, who knew?)

This cake is surprisingly simple to make, a basic chocolate sponge and chocolate buttercream, a bit of tweaking and some pretty decoration and taa daa! Festive chocolate heaven right there.

So! Fancy showing us what festive food love you’re feeling this week? Here’s how it works:

Instagram

• Tag any festive food or drink photos with #festivefoodfriday.
• Each week Kerry and I will pick some of the most mouthwatering/funny/calorific and repost them.
• You can follow me @tamingtwins and Kerry at @kerryedwards. Please say hello!

Blog Linky

• Please add the badge below to your post. (Just highlight the bit in the text box and pop it in the HTML of your blog post.)
• Link up your festive season food or drink posts using the widget below. They can be recipes, round ups, drinks, meals out, anything that’s inspiring to festive food lovers.
• Old and new posts are welcome.
• You can add up to 5 posts each week if you’d like.
• We will pin all of the posts added to the Pinterest board, which has over 400,000 followers.
• The linky will be open until midday Tuesday the following week.
• Please visit and comment on at least 2 of the other posts that have linked up, per post that you add. Spread that Christmas cheer! This really helps to make the community.
• If you follow us on Twitter and tweet a link mentioning @tamingtwins and/or @kerrycooksblog and #festivefoodfriday, we will RT them.
• Each week we will write a round up on one of our blogs, linking to every post linked from the week before (this will include a photo from your post – please only enter if that’s okay).
• Please spread the word, the more the merrier!

at TamingTwins and KerryCooks

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at <a href="http://www.tamingtwins.com">TamingTwins</a> and <a href="http://www.kerrycooks.com">KerryCooks</a>
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Can’t wait to see what festive makes and bakes you have in store for this Festive Food Friday. Don’t forget to share on Instagram too by using #festivefoodfriday.

5.0 from 1 reviews

Chocolate Orange Layer Cake Recipe

 

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Ingredients

• 350g Unsalted butter
• 350g Caster sugar
• 6 Free range eggs
• 80g Good quality cocoa
• 270g Self raising flour
• 90g Melted dark chocolate
• 3 Teaspoons of Orange Extract (Waitrose sell a good one and it’s only £1.50 which is cheap as chips compared to some good quality extracts: Waitrose Cooks’ Homebaking orange extract)

For the icing:

• 300g Unsalted butter
• 600g Icing sugar
• 150g Dark chocolate
• 3 Teaspoons of Orange Extract

To decorate (if you fancy):

• Sugarflair Tangerine Gel Food Colour
• Your precious last Terry’s Chocolate Orange

Instructions

1. Grease 3 x 7″ round sandwich tins (or 2 x 8″).
2. Preheat the oven to 180C.
3. Cream your room temperature butter with your sugar until it’s pale, light and fluffy.
4. Mix in the eggs, one at a time, beating really well after each egg. Don’t worry if it starts to look a bit curdled, it’ll all come good.
5. Mix in your flour and cocoa. If you’ve been using a mixer, do this bit by hand. It helps to keep the sponge light.
6. Stir in the melted and slightly cooled chocolate and the orange extract.
7. Spoon into a your tins, smooth out with the back of a spoon. Make a bit of a dip in the middle to account for rising.
8. Bake for about 30 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. You might need to adjust the time by 5 minutes either way depending on your oven.
9. Meanwhile make your icing. Beat your butter until it’s pale, light and fluffy.
10. Beat in your icing sugar and orange extract.
11. Now split your icing into two bowls, weigh out 675g into one and there should be about 225g left in the other.
12. Add 150g melted and cooled dark chocolate to the 675g bowl of buttercream. Mix in completely.
13. Colour the other bowl of 225g of buttercream orange using Sugarflair Tangerine Gel Colour. Use a very very small amount at a time, just a tip of a knife or so, until you get the colour you fancy.
14. If either batch of buttercream is too stiff, beat in a teaspoon or two of boiling water to soften and lighten the texture of the icing.
15. When your cakes are completely cold, use a carving knife to level them. Just trim the top crust off. Remember, this is important, it’s not a waste of cake. If you don’t do this, with a cake this size it will be wonky.
16. Top each layer with a spread of your chocolate buttercream. Then snip the top off of two disposable piping bags, fill one with the rest of your chocolate buttercream and the other with the orange buttercream.
17. Pipe a circle around the outside of two of the layers, sit each on the one before.
18. On the top layer, pipe small dollops all over and top with your segments of chocolate orange.

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Are you feeling festive at all yet? What’s on your ‘to be baked’ list for the coming weeks?

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The post Chocolate Orange Layer Cake Recipe & Festive Food Friday #3 appeared first on Taming Twins.