Chocolate Orange Truffle Cake

You may remember, since it was only a couple of days ago, that I mentioned making a chocolate orange cake for someone's birthday and that it was sat in the freezer ready to be finished.  Well, tonight I finished it.

I'll repeat this for anyone who can't be bothered looking at the previous post, the recipe for the cake is from Roald Dahl's Revolting Recipes, and it's the chocolate cake that the little boy is forced to eat in front of the whole school for stealing food from the kitchen (I think I got that right?), in Matilda.  I didn't know there was a real recipe out there for it until I had a nosey around t'interweb and it's right here.

 



Chocolate Orange Truffle Cake

 

The recipe is simply for a rich chocolate cake, but having discovered that 'person with birthday' has a particular favourite flavour, namely chocolate orange (nooooo, really?!), I had to jazz it up a bit.  To the sponge mixture I added: 

• Zest of 3 large oranges
• 1 teaspoon orange extract

This was plenty to make the orange fight through the richness of the chocolate.  I know because this is one of those cakes that cracks on the top when it bakes, and oh dear, a little of the top fell off onto the counter when I was turning it out of its tin!  Shame.  It's a good thing it needed to be iced and presented upside down.

I did originally intend to sandwich the cake with some home made orange curd, but as I started to cut into it a piece of the side began to come away.  I didn't want to go to work tomorrow with a plate full of crumbs, so I stopped slicing!  This is, however, a rich, moist cake that isn't as deep as a regular sponge might be, so it can get away with not having an extra layer of sweetness inside, especially as it was about to be covered with ganache.  For future reference, for a layered cake I would either make two separate cakes, or I would refrigerate it well before getting out the knife.  I suppose it depends how much cake you want at the end!

I used a mixture of milk and dark chocolate for the ganache because I knew dark chocolate alone would just be way too much for the cake, and I didn't want the two fighting each other.  The quantities I used for the ganache were:

• 100g dark chocolate
• 200g milk chocolate
• 280g double cream

What I would say about mixing the cream and chocolate together is be careful how much you play with it and how vigorously you mix.  I ended up with a few little air bubbles in the finished cake that could have been avoided if I'd only slowed down a little.

Before covering the cake completely for the final glossy finish, I used a couple of spoons of the ganache straight away to thinly coat the cake.  The intention was to avoid crumbs flowing off to the surface of the ganache and spoiling the end result.  This also gave the rest of the ganache chance to cool a little, making it a little thicker before pouring onto the cake, so that it wouldn't all just run off into a big pool of chocolate on the counter!

 

With the leftover ganache I added orange extract to taste (yes, I got to taste it!) and left it to set in the fridge while the cake set under a nice, safe cover away from inquisitive fingers.

 

Once the mixture was set I used it to make truffle quinnelles and balls, rolled in cocoa powder, and arranged them on top of the cake.  In hindsight I should have made them smaller, but we live and learn.

 



Chocolate Orange Truffle Cake
Ooooh, look at the shine on that!

 

Overall I'm very happy with the finish, not least because this is the first time I've successfully coated a cake with glossy chocolate ganache.  Now I know the trick to it, I'll be repeating it.  Oh, you know I will!

 

If the birthday girl doesn't enjoy this she's not getting another.  Quite honestly, she's lucky she's getting this one!