Tasty Thursday - Chocolate Orange cake

Today’s Tasty Thursday was inspired by the guys over at VegNews. It’s an awesome website if you’re cooking vegetarian. I took their recipe for Crème-filled Chocolate Orange Cupcakes and modified it to produce a Chocolate Orange cake with Orange Buttercream and poured fondant frosting. The fondant came courtesy of candy.about.com

We had a little surprise party for my Dads 60th birthday (early because their gift is a holiday in Cape Town for the week of their birthdays) and the cake was an absolute hit :)

For future reference though, I would adjust the recipe to have a little more liquid so that the cake becomes less dense. The chocolate and orange flavours complement each other quite nicely and the icing was delicious.

So without further ado ... the recipe :
Cake Ingredients
1 ½ cups flour
½ cup cocoa powder
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
¾ cup orange juice
½ cup canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon orange zest

For the cake :
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Sift together flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt
In a separate bowl, whisk together orange juice, canola oil, vanilla, and orange zest.
Mix wet and dry ingredients
Divide batter between 2 greased non-stick 20cm cake tins
Bake for approx 30-45 mins until toothpick comes out clean

For the buttercream
4 cups powdered sugar
½ cup melted butter at room temperature (i would adjust this to ¾ cup)
1 tablespoon orange zest
¼ cup orange juice

Beat powdered sugar, butter and orange zest together slowly adding in orange juice until the desired consistency is reached.

For the Fondant :
Follow the instructions here and leave to rest overnight.

Assembly :
When the cake is completely cold, smother the top of one with buttercream and place the other on top. Cover the top and sides with more buttercream.
Melt the fondant in a saucepan until it reaches pouring consistency
Pour fondant over cake ensuring that it is evenly spread on the top and slides down the sides in dribbles.
Colour leftover buttercream with food colouring and decorate.