Chocolate Sauce & Orange Cake!

Just before Christmas we received a bundle of rather tasty icing sugar (& cocoa powder) from Sugar & Crumbs. We were sent a range including, orange zest, coconut, Lemon drizzle and chocolate cherry cocoa powder. Now these are all natural flavoured – 100% natural fruits!

The first thing the boys wanted to do was to sample them before I could make up some butter icing! Needless to say they loved them! (I loved them knowing they had no e numbers in them!) I don’t think a heaped mouthful of cocoa powder went down as well (they wouldn’t believe me it wasn’t pure chocolate) but we made it up that night as a chocolate sauce to go over ice cream and they adored it! The flavourings aren’t synthetic which is a huge relief and are delicate and not over powering like the fake flavourings which are around these days.

So what did I make with these scrummy sugars? Well I’ll share my ice cream sauce with you and also what I used the Orange Zest for! They others have been made up to buttercreams to pop on little cupcakes after school!

Orange Drizzle Cake

225g Soft Unsalted Butter

225g Caster Sugar

4 Eggs

225g Self-Raising Flour

Finely Grated Zest & Juice of

1 Orange

25g Caster Sugar

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/Fan 160C/Gas

Mark 4. Beat the butter and 225g sugar together until pale and creamy. Add the eggs,one at a time, slowly mixing through after each addition.

2. Sift in the flour then add the zest of the orange and mix until well combined.

3. Line a loaf tin with grease-proof paper then spoon in the mixture and level the top.

4. Bake for 45-50 minutes until a thin skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.

5. While the cake is cooling in its tin, mix some 2 tablespoons of water with 25g orange zest icing sugar. Prick the warm cake all over with a fork and drizzle the drizzle over the top. (*)

6. Leave in the tin until completely cool, then remove and serve.

(*) I tipped the cake out & sliced it in half and made up some Orange Zest buttercream and popped this in the middle as well!

Butter Cream recipe courtesy of Sugar & Crumbs

500g of Sugar and Crumbs flavoured icing sugar or 50% Sugar and Crumbs flavoured icing sugar and 50% plain icing sugar

250g of unsalted butter

tablespoon of milk

Method

1.   Place butter at room temperature  into your mixing bowl (250g)
2.   Mix in bowl to lovely and soft, this will take several minutes.
3.  Add Sugar and Crumbs Flavoured Icing sugar (500g) this can be the full bag or 250g of the bag, plus 250 of plain icing sugar.
4.  Add a tablespoon of milk.
5.  Mix by hand at first to help reduce an icing cloud
6.  Now mix with your mixer or hand blender for several minutes, until light and fluffy.
7.  Add more milk if you want to make a really soft consistency.

Chocolate Sauce

Ingredients:

·         2 1/4 cups granulated sugar

·         3/4 cup Sugar & Crumbs Cherry cocoa powder

·         1 1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

·         1/4 teaspoon salt

·         1 1/2 cups whole milk

·         1 tablespoon vanilla

Method:

Place first four (dry) ingredients in a medium-sized saucepan, along with 1/2 cup of the milk and whisk to combine into a thick paste. Add the remaining milk, bring the mixture to a boil, and whisk to combine well. When sauce boils, reduce heat to low and simmer very gently for 5 minutes, whisking often. Remove from heat, add vanilla, and cool.