Another loaf cake! This time it’s a bit of a fancy one! I started out making this as a regular weekday cake, then realised it was turning into a Special Cake. I popped some candles in it and transformed it into a birthday cake – luckily the recipient’s birthday was just five days away! It’s super easy to make, it’s just quite heavy on the ol’ ingredients! But it’s delicious – dense, chocolatey and with an unmistakable Terry’s tang.
Chocolate Orange Loaf Cake
Ingredients
250g butter or baking spread
250g light brown sugar
200g self raising flour
50g cocoa powder
5 eggs
Zest of 2 oranges
1/2 tsp orange extract
1 dark Terry’s Chocolate Orange
Icing
125g unsalted butter – room temperature
250g icing sugar
125g dark or milk Terry’s Chocolate Orange
1 tbsp milk
Terry’s Chocolate Orange segments to decorate
Method
- Preheat your oven to 180°C/160°C fan/gas mark 4 and line a 2lb loaf tin. Mine is slightly smaller, so I needed more cooking time – see notes below.
- Beat together your baking spread or butter and sugar for a few minutes with a hand or stand mixer until well combined and fluffy.
- Add the flour, cocoa, eggs, orange zest and orange extract and carefully combine until well mixed. Watch out for those flour clouds puffing up around the kitchen!
- Chop up your dark chocolate orange into chunks and stir them into your mixture.
- Pour the mix tint your loaf tin.
- Pop into the oven for around an hour. Check after 55 minutes. If it’s still wobbly, return to the oven and check again after 10 minutes. With a slightly smaller loaf tin, the baking time will need to be extended, don’t worry if it takes longer, but keep checking by inserting a skewer to the centre. When it comes out clean, or with just a few crumbs, your cake is done! Remember there’s melted chocolate in there, so if the skewer comes out chocolatey, it’s worth checking again!
- Cool in the tin before removing to a cooling rack.
- Ice when it’s completely cool.
Icing
- Cut your your room-temperature butter into cubes and beat in stand mixer, or with a hand mixer, for a couple of minutes until it is pale. You may need to scrape down the sides of the bowl, mid way through to ensure it’s all beaten nicely.
- Melt your chocolate orange, either in the microwave in 30 second blasts, or in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water. I used a mixture of dark and milk chocolate orange which was absolutely delicious – the dark chocolate takes the edge off the sweetness of the milk.
- Add the icing sugar to the butter – carefully! And beat until smooth.
- Add the melted chocolate to the butter and sugar and beat to combine.
- If the mix is too stiff, add a little milk to loosen – it needs to be a pipe-able consistency.
- Pop the icing in a piping bag and pipe decorative swirls, rosettes, rows or stars onto the cooled cake – whatever pattern you fancy! Or you can spread it on with a palette knife.
- Decorate the top with your remaining chocolate orange slices. They’re great for marking how wide a slice should be ?.
Enjoy!
?❤️?
From Jane’s Patisserie.
