It was my friend Steve's birthday on the weekend, so I decided to make him a cake. However, there were a couple of important restrictions on my choice of cake - first, it had to be gluten free and dairy free; second, it had to be robust enough to last while standing out on Steve's doorstep for an indefinite period of time.
After a quick Google search, I found this recipe for a Spiced Chocolate Orange Cake on Cook Sister!, which is out of Nigella Lawson's Feast. I own this cookbook, so it is quite funny that I turned to the Web to find a recipe.
The key change that I made to fit in with my two criteria was to replace the cream cheese frosting with water icing. This turned out to be a good move, as Steve did not find the cake until the next day, as he had been away.
This cake is a very handsome burnished brown before icing:
I made myself a small taster cake, and can tell you that this cake is dense and very chocolatey, with strong orange undertones. I used one of my precious blood oranges from St Kilda Farmers Market to make this cake, so I like to think this made it especially good.
To decorate my creation, I used red writing gel (which came off when I wrapped the cake in cling film) and strawberries and cream lollies. I rather liked the bright red against the chocolate - it looked suitably festive.
This is a really easy cake to make - and it is all done in a food processor. The only palaver about it is boiling oranges for two hours, so it is a very handy cake to have in your repertoire.
Happy birthday Steve!
10 comments:
Happy Birthday, Steve. You have one great friend who makes you something this special on your special day!
Aww that's so nice of you to make it for him and leave it on his doorstep-you're like a cake fairy! :D
Ooooh I love chocolate and orange. So much! Steve is one lucky guy!
I like that the cake is such a lovely dark brown and I'm sure the ground almonds give it a lot of flavor. I definitely want to try this one!
P.S. Something funky happened with your last comment to my blog--it went through google instead of disqus and I didn't realize I needed to have them "synchronized." I'm importing your comment into disqus as we speak so it will show up in the comments section. Ah, technology, not my forte...
What a lovely welcome home surprise! How sweet
How very thoughtful of you to find a cake that met the restrictions and took into consideration the fact that he might not find the cake right away. So glad he did find it and I am sure he was so happy to come home to such a pretty cake just for him!
I am so glad he didn't step on it - sounds fantastic - I have made a boiled orange cake and thought it would be much nicer with chocolate - though I have discovered that you can get around the 2 hour boiling palaver by microwaving the oranges - so much quicker
What a great friend you are! And, to go that extra mile for the food restrictions as well in the cake!
It sounds delicious. I'd be happy to come home and find this cake waiting for me!
I've avoided gluten-free baking up until now, but I've found some very nice recipes recently - it does seem to have come of age.
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