Choc full of chocolate

Well you may have noticed that I’ve not written a blog in nearly two months.  Beyond the excuse of Christmas and a round of various illnesses including the dreaded Noro Virus (and an evening where I had too many chips and dips) and a crazy time at work I am sad to have had such a hiatus.  So much has happened in the last couple of months I wouldn’t know where to start. I really should have kept up the blogging in the first place… I need to trawl through tones of photos and finish tidying up then maybe I’ll have my head around the fact that it’s 2013 already!

Anywho before I get round to that I thought I’d share a little recipe with you all.  Some of you may still be on your festive holidays and I bet you’ve got lots of Christmas chocolate lying around. I got a tin of Roses, a box from Thorntons, a box from Hotel Chocolat and two boxes of Lindt.  You know if you eat too many carrots you can turn orange?  Well I'm sure I'm looking a bit tanned after all the chocolate I've eaten…Anyway wondering what to do with all that chocolate…? My lovely hubby made me a chocolate cake for my birthday last week and it was incredible so I thought I’d share the recipe with you all.

I know many people will have started New Year diets but this cake contains a whole orange…literally a whole orange- peel and everything- so if you eat the whole thing in one go at least you’ll have had one of your five a day!

Ingredients:

1 Orange

3 Eggs

10 oz caster sugar

8.5 floz sunflower oil

4 oz dark or milk chocolate, broken into bits and melted

1 oz cocoa powder

9 oz plain flour

1.5 tsp baking powder

How to bake:

·         Stick a skewer all the way through the unsuspecting orange and boil in a pan for half an hour.  Blitz orange whole in a food processor or with a stick blender (I’d be lost without mine…it got me through weaning not to mention many litres of soup!) make sure you get rid of any pips!

·         Preheat the oven 180/Gas 4/160 fan oven.  Butter and line a 9inch tin.

·         Beat the eggs, sugar and oil and gradually beat in the cooled orange and cooled chocolate.

·         Add all the other ingredients I haven’t mentioned yet.

·         Shove the mixture in the tin and bake for about an hour or until a skewer comes clean.

·         Cool for a bit and the turn out on to a cooling rack.

Now the exciting bit

Ingredients for the ganache:

8 oz dark chocolate

8 floz double cream

What to do:

·         Melt the chocolate in a bowl I prefer to microwave my chocolate but keep a close eye so it doesn’t burn.

·         Boil the cream, pour in the chocolate and blend till smooth…which you can only truly tell by tasting some…

·         Cool in the fridge for a hour until it’s matte in finish and smooth.

Spread the ganache all over your cake and eat the rest!

This cake has been a winner in our house, the lady has in particular enjoyed several slices…I tried to take a photo but it was gone so quickly I barely had time to find the camera.  But here's a picture of how hubby decorated it before we mauled our way through it.

Happy Birthday to me, Happy Tummy to everyone else...let me know how they turn out...send me a picture...or you could send me a sample...!

Seriously.