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This cake is the ultimate mix of easy and quick but you are rewarded with a dense and flavorful cake filled to the brim with melty chocolate. It’s one of those recipes that looks like a lot of time and effort has gone into it, but it’s actually incredibly simple.
Your guests will be thinking that you must’ve slaved away in the kitchen all day, but in reality you whipped this up in an hour (45 minutes of which is cooking time!). It gives you even more time to do all the important stuff like setting the table, cleaning the house and…
What’s the other thing you have to do? Oh yeah, make the actual dinner!
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I made this cake in winter first, and it really appealed to me because when it’s warm straight out of the oven it makes for great comfort food. I’m definitely big on the warm and comforting puddings in winter and this cake totally fit the bill.
A little bit of ice cream or cream on the side takes it just from being a cake to a dessert worthy of any dinner party. A quick cake that you only has 20 minutes’ prep time and you can have hot or cold? Yes please!
I definitely feel like these are the best cakes, and this is a recipe I always come back to when I get that feeling that I want something sweet for dessert, but I don’t want to be in the kitchen for hours.
I must admit that I can be known to spend 5+ hours in the kitchen over two days coming up with an elaborate and extremely time-consuming layer cake that wobbles dangerously as it gets transported to its final eating place…
But. Sometimes, we all need some simple and easy in our lives. And sometimes we also all need cake in our lives.
I think I can safely say that this cake will also appeal to all of those chocoholics out there (like me!) who just can’t get enough of the good stuff.
You could use whatever sort of chocolate you want in this cake (although white chocolate might be a little odd…) but I love the contrast of using a semi- or bittersweet chocolate with the tart orange and slightly sweet cake.
The other thing is though, the cake itself isn’t super sweet so you could totally use milk chocolate if you wanted to kick the sweetness up a notch.
If you want the oozing chocolate effect like I have here, make sure you place the chocolate in vertical strips around the cake, makes it more dramatic that way!
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Surprisingly, apart from whatever chocolate you use, there’s actually not that much sugar in this cake. It gets most of its sweetness from mixing dates in, which of course makes it super moist too!
Wins all around really. I think whichever way you choose to look at it, you really have no choice but to make this cake. For dessert. Tonight. Happy baking!
- 1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, softened
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 whole orange, washed and chopped into cubes
- 1 cup (5.5oz) dates, chopped
- ¾ cup water
- ½ tspn baking soda
- 2 cups plain flour
- 1 tspn vanilla essence
- Pinch of salt
- 8oz (bittersweet) chocolate, broken into pieces
- Preheat the oven to 350°F and grease and line a 9 inch round cake tin.
- Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.
- Place the orange pieces in a blender or food processor with the dates, water and baking soda. Blend until there are no large lumps of orange.
- Add the orange mixture to the butter and sugar mixture and fold in the flour, vanilla and salt. Pour into the cake tin.
- Take your broken up pieces of chocolate and poke them into the cake mix.
- I did mine vertically and made rings of circles getting smaller towards the middle so that you get the awesome oozing chocolate in every slice.
- Smooth the cake batter over the chocolate as best you can and bake for 40-50 minutes.
- Leave the cake to cool slightly, then transfer to a serving plate or chopping board to slice and serve.
- This is best served with whipped cream, or if you really want to get fancy, add a little orange juice and zest to the double cream then whip. Yum!
- It will keep for 3-4 days stored either in an airtight container or wrapped in clingfilm. I can guarantee it will be gone before you can even get the container out though!