12 Bakes of Christmas 2017: Chocolate Orange Christmas Cake

For those who like the idea of a festive Christmas cake or pudding but without having to actually eat fruit cake, this chocolate orange cake is the perfect alternative.

Ingredients

Cake

2 eggs

200g self-raising flour

110g of sugar

110g butter

2 tbsp cocoa

1 orange, zest and juice (or if you’re not a fan of orange, 2 tbsp of millk)

100g of chocolate (or anything else you fancy like nuts, pieces of marzipan or chocolate chips.)

Dash of cinnamon

Dash of ginger

Icing

Orange, zest and juice

150g icing sugar

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C.

2. Use butter and flour to grease two identical, small-medium sized oven-proof bowls.

3. Put all of the ingredients except the chocolate into a bowl, and beat together.

4. Chop up the chocolate into chunks and add to the mixture. Divide evenly between the two bowls. Put in the oven for 35 minutes.

5. When the cakes are done, leave to cool.
When completely cool, remove from the bowls and cut the tops off the cakes so that each is roughly a semi-circle of the same size. The tops can be put to one side and eaten separately.

6. Mix the icing sugar and orange juice and zest in a bowl.
Add more icing sugar or juice as you see fit; you want the icing to be thick enough that it won’t completely drip off the cake but not too thick so that it will ooze and create the natural dripping pattern that is reminiscent of a Christmas pudding.

7. Place about a quarter to half of the icing sugar on the top of the first half of the cake and use it to connect the two halves together, to create a circular cake.

8. Use a spoon to layer the rest of the icing on the top of the cake where it should drip down evenly.

9. Leave the icing to dry, and then it should be ready to eat.