Halloween Chocolate Orange Cake - It's Immense

 Hey beaut's!

Chocolate orange is one of my favourite flavours when it comes to chocolate, that zesty addition of orange is just everything, and as Halloween is going to be a little bit different for all of us this year I thought I'd put that epic combination into a delicious 3 tier cake and jazz it up for Halloween! Of course chocolate orange is an epic festive flavour too, so you could use this recipe at Christmas time but just decorate it Christmassy.

What You Will Need For The Chocolate Orange Cake

350g Unsalted Butter

 350g Caster Sugar

 6 Free Range Eggs

 50g Good Quality Cocoa

 270g Self Raising Flour

 90g Melted Dark Chocolate ( I Used Green & Blacks 70%)

Zest Of Two Oranges

What You Will Need For The Buttercream

300g Unsalted Butter

 650g Icing Sugar

Orange Food Colouring

2 tbsp Milk or Juice The Oranges For An Orange Buttercream.

How To - Chocolate Orange Cake

1. Pre-heat your oven to gas mark 4 and line three cake tins with baking paper.

2. Melt the bar of dark chocolate in the microwave in 30 second bursts then set aside to cool whilst you get on with the rest of the recipe.

3. In a large bowl, cream together the caster sugar and the butter until its pale and fluffy then whack in your eggs one at a time.

4. Then add in your cocoa powder and flour and mix well before adding in the melted chocolate and the zest of two oranges, give it a final whizz then split the batter between the three tins and bake for around 20 minutes or until the top of the cakes are springy to touch.

How To - Buttercream

1. In a large bowl or standing mixer, beat the butter until it becomes super light in colour and whippy, then start adding the icing sugar slowly to avoid the dreaded icing sugar cloud and mix again until combined. 

2. Your buttercream will need a splash of milk at this point to loosen it up slightly, however if you want an orange flavoured buttercream just juice your oranges that you zested previously and pop 2 tablespoons of the juice into the buttercream instead of the milk. This is also the time I add in my food colouring, I went for orange as not only does it go with the chocolate orange theme it's also fab for Halloween too.

3. Pipe or spoon the buttercream between the three sponges and sandwich them together, then you can decorate the top of the cake how you like, I piped on some swirls with my left over buttercream and then topped the swirls with a mixture of Halloween sprinkles and candy corn sweeties, and voila!

You HAVE to make this cake if your a fan of chocolate orange, it's so delicious and honestly tastes exactly like a Terry's Chocolate Orange. It's quite an easy bake too despite it being three layers as the ingredients are quite minimal which is a bonus. Go on beaut's give this one a go!