We had a recent birthday in the family so I decided it was a good excuse to make some homemade chocolate cake! This post is more of an ode to how pretty it came out.
To start the cake, I used the Guinness Chocolate Cake recipe I linked in a former blog. Except for this time, I decided it needed a little something added to it (thanks to all the Holiday Baking Championship I’ve been watching). What do we have an abundance of around the bungalow? Well, none other than citrus, of course.
So I grabbed my Great Jones Goods “hot dish” and got to work.
Chocolate and orange, a holiday flavor match made in heaven
When I think of holiday flavors, orange is at the top of that list. The holiday season marks about a month-ish into citrus season here in Phoenix. Growing up, I was always fond of the candy chocolate oranges you whack at Christmas.
Yes, I sold myself. This cake needed to be infused with citrus, specifically orange. So that’s what I did. My take on the whole thing? Could have been more orangey.
To be honest, this was my first time infusing anything into an overall baked good (my last infusion attempt was the basil white chocolate drizzle in this strawberry donut recipe). The basil infusion was a drizzle, this cake needed to be enhanced all around with orange.
Infusing orange into the cake elements
For this recipe, I added orange zest and flavoring to the batter and frosting. Because I think the orange flavor could have been more prominent, next time I want to try an orange soak and perhaps another element of orange between the layers.
The beginning of the recipe calls for heating butter and Guinness up together. At that point, I zested two oranges into the mix. I also added a few drops of orange flavoring into the batter.
Same thing with the frosting. As I made that, I zested oranges into the ingredients and added a few drops of orange flavoring.
Decorating the chocolate cake
Did I have a decoration in mind when I started this cake? Of course not. But I did have some dried citrus and edible pansy flowers. So I decided to just lay the citrus wheels across the cake and peppered it with edible flowers.
How do you think it came out?
