Chocolate and Orange Jaffa Cake Recipe

Sunshine on a plate, a twist on Jaffa Cakes but homemade and much bigger - yum!

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Well it's been a busy weekend with both family, friends and baking, we had friends coming over at the weekend and decided to bake something different for after Sunday lunch. I had been watching the Great British Bake Off and one of the contestants had made some meringues based upon some olde fashioned flavours of her childhood and I decided that perhaps my Lemon Drizzle Cake recipe (which you can also find on this hub) could be altered somehow to reflect one of my childhood favourites, those gorgeous biscuits (cookies if you're in America) called Jaffa Cakes, on. I'm not sure if you have them in different parts of the world but they are little sponge drops with a flat circle of orange jelly in the middle and topped with dark chocolate. Like many a child I used to deconstruct them, my favourite order of eating was first to eat all the chocolate off the top, followed by the sponge and finally kept to last because it was the best bit the jelly.

So here's my grown-up take on a childhood favourite.

4ozs Soft Butter

6ozs Self-Raising Flour

6ozs Caster Sugar

2 large Free Range Eggs

1 tablespoon of Baking Powder

3 tablespoons of Milk

3 tablespoons of freshly squeezed orange juice

zest of ½ an orange

To finish and for the topping:

Freshly squeezed juice of an fat juicy Organic Orange (minus the 3 tablespoons used above)

4ozs of Caster Sugar

125-200g of your preferred Dark Chocolate

zest of ½ an orange

Note: if you're not a fan of dark chocolate you may prefer to use half milk and half dark, I think purely milk is far too sweet and some people aren't too keen on the bitterness of pure dark chocolate - it's your cake and your taste buds - whichever way you decide it's yummy cake - be happy!

• Pre-heat your oven to 180ºF /160ºC (if on Fan setting) / Gas Mark 4.

• Line the your loaf tin with a cake liner. If you don't have one grease the loaf tin and cut a strip of baking parchment which will run along the bottom and up both sides, it will look like this \___/, and this will help you remove the cake easily.

• Into your food processor put the 4ozs of soft butter, 6ozs of Self-Raising Flour, 6ozs of Caster Sugar, 2 large Eggs, 1 tablespoon of Baking Powder, 3 tablespoons of Milk and 3 tablespoons of orange juice and blitz until you have a lovely smooth batter.

• At this point add the zest of ½ the orange, you're going to use the other half for the topping on the cake as you can see in the photograph above. If you put the zest in before you blitz everything it will disappear into the mix and you won't have those lovely chewy golden bits of zest throughout the cake.

• Take the bowl off the food processor and remove the blade.

• Then using a spatula stir the pieces of zest into the cake mixture.

• Now pour the mixture into your prepared tin.

• Bake for 40-45 minutes until the cake is gloriously golden and when a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean so you know it's baked all the way through.

• Place your cake, still in its tin, on a wire rack to cook for 10 minutes.

• While the cake is cooling mix together the rest of your orange juice and the 4ozs of caster sugar in a microwaveable bowl.

• Pop the bowl into your microwave and zap for 30 secs - 1 minute so that the sugar melts into the orange juice.

• Take a skewer and poke holes all over the cake, loosen all sides of the cake with a knife, going between the cake and the paper at the ends.

• Now spoon the orange mixture all over the cake, it will seep into the top of the cake and run down the sides, most of it staying in the tin if possible and now leave the cake to cool completely.

Topping

You can of course leave this cake exactly as it is and I did consider it, but only for a second, without the chocolate it wouldn't be the Jaffa Cake of my childhood. As you can see in the photograph I used milk chocolate and this was a definitely a mistake, although it was still luscious I think it really needs that hit of dark chocolate against the fresh orange taste, which is how I will be doing it in the future. Some people add butter and other substances to their chocolate topping but I just want a topping of dark chocolate on this cake, no icing sugar, no soft butter, just plain dark decadent chocolate. So ...

• Over a pan of gently boiling water place a heatproof bowl and into it break up the dark chocolate, leave until it begins to soften, please don't walk away as chocolate can sometimes be a temperamental beast, once it start to stir gently, just before all the lumps disappear take it off the heat and stir until smooth and glossy.

• Using a spatula pour the chocolate over the cooled cake, smooth out so that the entire top is covered, sprinkle the remaining zest on top and ...

• Lick the Spatula - you know you want to and if anyone looks at you strangely, just tell them that you're 'just following orders'.

Leave the cake to set, it does take a long time for the chocolate to re-set and it is very hard not to stick your fingers in it just to check but try not to, it will eventually set.

I hope you enjoy this cake as much as my friends did, the smell of the cake was so irresistible that it was decided to eat the cake before having lunch, tut tut, says it all really, I blame Jane. My son went off this morning to work with one of the last pieces of the cake in his lunchbox, and now that the house is empty of children, the dogs have been fed and are dozing on their bed, it's wet, grey and very windy outside I'm off to make a cup of coffee and savour a slice of sunshine.