I found a cupcake recipe book which I bought years ago, and had a flick through. I’ve actually not made many of the cakes from the book so gave these chocolate orange ones a go!
I didn’t have brown sugar as the revipe called for, but just used white caster.
The orange flavour comes from the zest of an orange and 160ml of juice – I got most of this from the orange itself but had to top up with some carton juice. There was also melted dark chocolate and cocoa powder in the batter. The orange flavour is fairly subtle – I perhaps needed more zest.
The top is just a round of fondant stuck on with marmalade, which I’ve never done before even though it’s very simple! I had some fondant left over from Christmas cake decorating so I could use that. The recipe called for blue food colouring but I only had yellow, so I decided to die the icing a pale yellow.
The cakes are lovely and moist, and the flavours are balanced. Definitely a recipe to repeat – I’d like to try it with buttercream instead of fondant!
Bakes by Jo 