BIG TONI’S ITALIAN KITCHEN

Chocolate Orange (or clementine’s) Cake

When we have a house full, which is quite often, we feel flattered people want to spend time in our company. (Well I do) The only problem is feeding them.

A few Sundays ago we had a house full, this had something to do with the fact we went to pub for a pre lunch drink with our three daughters, our son and their other half’s.

So after we had a drink or two we ended up with 10 for Sunday lunch, Luckily we had been to Costco on Saturday and bought one of their excellent hams. 

I had cooked it on Saturday; I always like to give my hams time to rest between cooking and eating I think they always taste better the next day. 

For pudding we had my chocolate cake.

So heres my chocolate Cake recipe which we had for sweet, or “after’s” as we used to call it.

Again I had thought ahead, something I don’t often do, and cooked the cake on Saturday. This recipe is easy and quick to make but it is just delicious and perfect for 10 chocolate cake lovers. It goes very well with some ice cream, cream, on its own with a coffee or even another glass of wine.

For a cake that will feed 10 people you will need

•    4 large free range eggs

•    120 g sugar

•    120 g good dark chocolate

•    50 g extra virgin olive oil

•    3 clementine’s boiled in water for an hour then put in a blender peel and all. Remove the pips if they have them. (or a large orange)

•    150 g ground almonds

•    100 g self raising flour

•    2 teaspoons baking powder

•    1 pinch salt

•    Icing sugar to serve and or coco powder.

How to make it

Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F - gas mark 4)

Blend the cold boiled clementine’s into a fine pulp

Whip the eggs with the sugar 

Melt the chocolate in a bain-marie and stir in the olive oil, and the clementine pulp 

Add the liquids to the well-beaten eggs and sugar and mix well.

Add the ground almonds with the flour; the baking powder and a pinch of salt then fold into the mixture gently.

Butter a 20 cm round mould cake and dust slightly with flour.

Spoon the chocolate batter into the mould and bake for about 25 minutes until dry, almost crisp on the surface and moist inside. (I always test my cakes with a stick of dry spaghetti push it into the centre of the cake if it comes out dry the cake is cooked.)

Let cool completely before dusting with icing sugar to serve.

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