Some baking before Christmas

The holidays are coming closer and I’m pretty happy about that because it means that I have almost two weeks off to work on so many projects. I really hope to finish some of my projects that are already rotating in my head for a long time. As the weather is pretty wet and cold outside it’s the perfect time to stay in the kitchen and to do some baking. I like baking more than cooking even though you end up with more stuff to clean.

I’ve found a recipe online for a white chocolate orange cake and I’ve changed it a little bit by adding red currant to it. Due to the fact that I will be very busy during my christmas holidays my next post will be in two weeks. I thought that this would be the perfect post to wish you all a lovely christmas and happy holidays!

Ingredients

For the sponge mixture:

• 200 grams flour
• 280 grams sugar
• 80 grams cocoa, sifted
• 100 ml milk
• 10 eggs
• 1 dash of salt

For the cream filling:

• 6 leaves gelatin
• 1 liter orange juice
• 50 grams jam sugar
• 300 grams white chocolate, broken up
• 800 ml whipped cream

Instructions

In the original recipe there was a different instruction for the icing but I wanted to cover the complete cake with the white chocolate cream so I simply made more of the white chocolate cream by adding the extra chocolate to it. To make a separate icing you need to take 250 grams of chocolate and mix it with 80 ml whipped cream.

First start with the sponge mixture. Preheat the oven to 160 C°. Grease and base line a 20cm round, deep cake tin with baking paper. Separate the eggs, beat the whites until stiff. Add the sugar and the yolks first. Now add the flour, the cocoa and the milk, beat until smooth, then tip into the tin. Bake for 30 minutes. Cool in the tin for 30 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely. Using a bread knife, halve the cake horizontally in three round pieces.Melt the chocolate in a pan over low heat. In the meantime, soak the gelatin. Add the orange juice and the whipped cream to the melted chocolate. Do the same with the soaked gelatin. Put the mixture for some minutes into the fridge to let it thicken slightly, but do not allow to get too stiff.

Put one half of the cake into a spring form pan, leave a gap on the outside and spread the cream filling over it. To give it a little bit of color and fruity taste, I added some red currant to the recipe. If  you want to do the same, you need to add now some red current over the first half. Now cover with the second half and spread the cream filling again over it until the spring form pan is filled with it on each side. Decorate with the red currant or any other fruit. Alternatively you can use orange stripes for decoration. Let the cream thicken in the fridge for 30 minutes or more, remove the spring form pan when the cream is firm enough.The Brave Cook