Chocolate Orange Loaf Cake

Chocolate Orange Loaf Cake

Ingredients: makes one 8 x 4 1/2 inches cake pan  (adapted from “Nigella Kitchen” by Nigella Lawson)

     1-1/4 sticks Soft unsalted butter (160g)

     2 tbsp Golden corn syrup
     1 cup Brown sugar (I used slightly more than 1/2 cup = 70g)
     1 cup All purpose flour/plain flour, sifted (115g)
     1/2 tsp Baking soda
     3 tbsp Unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted (Valrhona cocoa powder 68%)
     2 large Eggs
     zest of 2 regular orange and juice of 1 (1/3 cup = 60g orange juice – from one orange)

     Method:

• Preheat the oven to 165 degrees C and line your loaf pan with parchment paper all sides up.
• Beat the already soft butter with corn syrup and the sugar until you have a fairly smooth cafe Americano cream, though the sugar will have a bit of grit about it. 
• Mix the flour, baking soda,  and cocoa powder together, and beat into the syrup mixture one tablespoonful of the dry ingredients before beating in 1 egg. Then add another couple of spoonfuls of the dry ingredients before beating in the second egg.
• Carrying on beating in the remaining dry ingredients and then add, still beating, the orange zest and finally, gradually, the juice. At this stage, the batter may suddenly look dimpled, as if slightly curdled. 
• Pour and scrape into the prepared pan and bake for about 40 – 45 minutes, though check 5 minutes before and be prepared to keep it in the oven 5 minutes longer if needed. A cake tester won’t come out entirely clean, as the point of this cake, light though it may be, is to have just a hint of inner stickiness.
• Let cool a little in the pan on a wire rack, then turn out with care and leave on the rack to cool.
• I added some candied orange peels as topping.