Chocolate and Orange Marbled Ring Cake

Here’s a cake to impress. It looks stunning and tastes great. The sponge is light. The whole cake is luscious and loaded with chocolate plus a lovely marbling of orange.

Makes: A moderately large cake, that provides about 10 – 12 “significant slices”.

Level: A little step up from “easy”.

Time: About 45 minutes prep then 35 minutes baking and 15 minutes cooling. Decorating time will vary, depending on what you do. Allow at least 10 minutes to cut the cake then another 20 minutes to add items. You’ll have to wait for the ganache to thicken, but you could make that while the cake is baking.

Need: A plain Bundt tin (i.e. A round tin with central space – see picture below, in Gallery 1)

Ingredients

Cake

100g/3.5oz butter, softened
225g/8oz caster sugar
200g/7oz S.R. flour + 1 tsp
Pinch of salt
20g/0.75oz cocoa powder, sifted
20g/0.75oz ground almonds
Zest from half an orange
50g/1.75oz dark chocolate pieces
50g/1.75oz white chocolate pieces
2 medium eggs
150ml/5.5fl oz whole milk
1 – 2 tsp vanilla extract
Some Orange food colouring (amounts vary depending on the brand and how vivid you want it.)
1 tsp Orange extract (optional)

Filling/topping

270ml/9.5fl oz double cream*
400g/14oz dark chocolate, grated or chopped small

Decorations (your choice, below are suggestions)

Terry’s Chocolate Orange pieces or other chocolate pieces
Sprinkles and/or stars
Edible gold spray

*While making the ganache I discovered I needed another 50ml/1.75fl oz of cream, but had no time to buy any. The answer was to add in 50g/1.75oz Mascarpone, which worked so well I’ll do it intentionally next time. (Full fat cream cheese would probably be OK too.)

I get annoyed when recipe instructions have loads of pictures at every step. Usually I want to get on and see the steps before anything else, so that’s how I’ve set it out for you. Later there are four galleries with pictures taken during the process of making the cake. It’s not quite a step-by-step guide, but pretty close.

Instructions

1. Brush the tin with melted butter then chill in the fridge until set. Once is probably sufficient, nevertheless I usually repeat this to be sure. (I probably have a “belt and braces” mentality when baking.)

2. Pre-heat the oven to 180C / fan 160C / 350F / Gas 4.

3. Cream together the butter and sugar, then stir in the flour and salt. Divide the mixture into two halves in separate bowls. Sift cocoa powder into one half. Add ground almonds and the orange zest to the other. Stir the dark chocolate pieces into the dark mixture and the white chocolate pieces into the light mixture.

4. In a different bowl beat the eggs, milk and vanilla. Pour half into the dark dry mixture. Add orange food colouring and orange extract (if using) to the remaining liquid then pour this into the lighter dry mixture. Stir both mixtures well.

5. Lightly dust inside the tin with 1 tsp flour and knock out the loose excess. Spoon each mixture alternately into the tin then lightly ripple with a chop stick or skewer.

6. Bake for about 35 minutes, until just springy to the touch. Cool in the tin for 15 minutes then turn out on to a wire rack to cool fully. When fully cool, slice in half horizontally.

7. For the buttercream filling/topping, heat the cream in a saucepan and bring just to the boil. Remove from the heat and add the chocolate. Cover and leave for two minutes to melt. Stir or beat until well combined, leave to cool and thicken. Do not refrigerate.

8. Sandwich the cake together using about a third of the ganache. Cover the whole cake with the remaining ganache and add your chosen decorations. Finally, you have the option to spray the cake if you wish.

The process – galleries

Gallery 1 – Preparation and mixing

I like the “Coloursplash” range, but maybe put in a smidgy bit too much orange

Gallery 2 – Into and out of the tin

Gallery 3 – Cutting the cake into halves

If you don’t have one of these a knife will be fine.

Gallery 4 – Adding ganache, stars and final decoration (minus gold spray)

I hope you enjoy making (and eating) this lovely cake. If you want to see more chocolate cake recipes click here. One special cake I’d recommend is my Chocolate wreath. It’s the cake that inspired this one. If you like the combination of chocolate and orange then you’ll also love my Double Chocolate Whole Orange Cake.

Please have a look at my site for lots of other recipes, savoury as well as sweet. If you’d like to comment or ask a question please do, via the contact page.