This Xmas I asked if I could assist with cooking all the meals. To my surprise I was told: "No Edje, all being handled and in the works." And then: "Edje, we can do with a bit more sweet bits. You could make that chocolate cake, the one you - sometimes - made in the past." It was a long time ago when I baked this one, or any other cake for that matter. Time to up my skills again. I kinda know the recipe by heart, but didn't feel secure enough.
First thing: Find it! Can't make a mistake. Too many people to please. Need to get the quantities right, which I forgot, except for the 3 oranges that I need to cook. But no idea about the amount of flour, sugar and eggs. Chocolate: one can't go wrong here. Surely, do not use just a little. Better to go for more. Pure, as in, at least 70% cacao.
In my list of recipes, I eventually found the link. But but but, the link was dead. Not just the recipe was unavailable, the whole website went down into the abyss, apparently. Next up: Search my food posts on HIVE. Not that I have many, but nonetheless, perhaps I created a post in the past with the recipe. Result: No, I didn't. Next: search the big ass content ocean, also known as The Internet. After opening at least 20 links, I got fed up. Got served with many chocolate stuff, from cakes to mousses and whatnot, but none of them resembled what I remembered and was asked and wanted to create.
A few days later - the deadline approaching - I got this 'brilliant' idea: Why not try and ask chatGPT? Being an avid chatGPT user - mostly for work - I was surprised I didn't think about this earlier. How stupid of me!
Since I knew the ingredients by heart, I created a detailed prompt:
It came back with the perfect-sounding response. It even said something about the optional cocos. Not to go for that. In exact words, it wrote: "No coconut needed - it doesn’t really add much here."
The photograph down below, is what it came up with.
The sweet version of the bell peppers: My touch. Delicious. When grilled, but not in the cake 😆 Add eggs! Somehow, I forgot to include them in the still image.
Ingredients in the image ⬇️
My approach is that I never follow a recipe exactly as it is given. Perhaps not the best way to go about cooking, when trying a 'new' recipe, since it is more difficult to figure out what went wrong when the outcome isn't that good. That said, I kinda remember the recipe, so I went with my take on it.
I kept - most of - the ingredients, but adjusted the amounts. More chocolate, about 220 grams dark chocolate in the cake itself and 140 grams for the glaze (used 4 chocolate bars, 90 grams each, hence the strange amounts). Instead of 4 large eggs, 6 large eggs. Instead of 180 grams of sugar, 183 grams; Huge difference 😂 I used brown sugar, since I like the taste better to white sugar. In the past, I also used cane sugar, I believe. I skipped the water and orange juice for the glaze. Something to consider to add to the glaze: Orange zest, grated orange peel. I decided to keep this idea for a future round. Also, I omitted the salt entirely.
Idea: add rough sea salt to the glaze when the chocolate cooled down a bit. Dark chocolate with large sea salt crystals is delicious, as I know from one of the chocolate bar versions by Tony Chocolonely [1].
Cooking: Finally
Ok, now we are getting to the cooking part itself. No idea what you guys and girls prefer. A few photographs? Tons of photographs? Please, guide me for the next food blog post. For this one, I decided to show - almost - all steps. The almost has to do with my opening one, the 3 oranges in a cooking pot on the stove. Totally forgot the shoot that one.
Request for help: Any advice you can give me to create images from let's say 3 or 4 photographs, so they are presented horizontally? To avoid tons of scrolling, ie to increase UX for all readers?
First, cook the oranges. I cooked for a bit more than the recipe said: about 90 minutes. Cut them to take out the seeds, but then figured out the oranges from the supermarket are genetically modified to avoid growth of seeds. Easy peasy for me. Owww, also remove the little green thingy on top of the orange, the little end of the stem where the orange hung off when it was born and grew until some farmer cut it off to sell to us.
Then blend the Oranges. I used a food processor, but a hand blender works fine as well. Plus, a hand blender is easier and quicker to clean.
Add the almond flour...
...and mix. You don't have to go for super smooth. The cake may come out a bit rough, but I like that.
In a separate bowl, add the eggs. No need to split the joke from the white. They go in complete. I used 6, but you may go safe and try 4 first - as per recipe.
Weigh the sugar.
You noticed the 183 grams? Not to worry, you may even add less sugar than specified in the recipe. Depends entirely on the levels of sweetness you prefer. But, do not omit sugar altogether. This cake needs a sweet touch.
Add the sugar...
...and mix, till you drop!
In the meantime, prepare the chocolate for the cake. Use the traditional way to melt the dark chocolate: Au bain-marie. I used the pot in which I cooked the oranges. This was still hot enough to melt the chocolate without the need to put in more energy - gas in my case, since I like a gas stove over any type of electric stove - into the water.
Add the chocolate to the egg/sugar mixture, and mix.
Add the orange/flour mix...
...and - again - mix.
Splash the baking powder on top, and ... you got it ... mix.
I know, I know, a lot of mixing! But do not get overwhelmed, the mixing parts are easy, while the smell becomes better and better the more ingredients are mixed into the batter.
A normal cake ring is all we need. Use a little butter to coat the ring. In the past, I used coconut fat, as I remember well. But this time, normal butter.
Then, push the thing into the oven. 170 degrees Celcius which is about 340 in Fahrenheit. I left it in for 45 minutes, exactly.
With this result.
Testing the inside with a toothpick. Cooked enough, I suppose.
Later, when cutting and tasting the cake, I discovered I could've reduced oven time to something like 40 minutes. The cake was still wet inside, but a little more wet could've enhanced the taste - texture - a little. But, please realise every oven is different, therefor to determine the exact right amount of oven minutes is something to learn over time, after executing various rounds of cake baking.
To glaze the cake, one needs to remove the tin. In the far distance, I had a pizza plate, a large one, I used for this purpose. That one got binned after it broke, unfortunately. Nothing around that could serve as a proper cake plate, I decided to use this pan as you can see in the image above.
I forgot to show you the step to melt the chocolate for the glaze. Used the same pot I cooked the oranges in, the same glass thingy. Just added more chocolate. As you can see, perhaps the chocolate was a little too cold...
...it didn't glaze by itself. Therefore, I used a little tool to help spread the dark, semi-liquid gold.
The cake in its final form, ready to be taken to my friend's place.
Obviously, my friend has a proper cake plate. But I was happy I used the pan, since I almost managed to let the cake slide off the cake plate when I moved it from a safe place to the dining table.
For those who likes to read what chatGPT told me regarding the cooking steps, see image below.
Forget about the last sentence. I didn't let the cake cool down at all. Applied the glaze minutes after I got the cake from the oven.
I do hope you got at least inspired by this pretty simple cake with mucho - chocolate and orange - flavour. ChatGPT wrote the following result:
- Very moist
- Deep chocolate flavour
- Fresh, slightly bitter orange note
- Naturally gluten-free
- Keeps well for 3–4 days
It was kinda moist, but not very. Hence, another reason why I stated before I could've reduced the oven time. The 'keeps well' number of days: I suppose, lets see. I baked the cake yesterday, and will eat a bit more later today. Must be good still, but who knows? 🙂 When not ok, I update this post to inform you.
Did you made food this Xmas? When yes, what did you create? When no, who did make the food you ate? Did you like all you ate? When not, what was the most terrible food you tasted?
