CAKE CHOCOLAT ORANGE (Chocolate and Candied Orange Loaf), p. 152
If any recipe was likely to whisper Make me! in my ear, it was one with dark chocolate, almond paste, and candied orange peel, all of which I happen to have in my pantry.
This would’ve been simpler with a stand mixer, but mine needs its plug replaced, so I used both a food processor to grind the almond paste and sugar, and a hand-held mixer for beating that mixture with the eggs, since I knew the almond paste would just fly all over the kitchen if I tried to do it with the hand mixer. Still, this came together easily. I had a jar with maybe a couple of ounces of a combination of organic sugar, ground vanilla bean sugar, and orange zest left over from making orange-vanilla sugar cookies a while ago, so I used that as part of the total weight of sugar. For the chocolate, I chopped up 72% bittersweet bar chocolate. I baked this in four mini loaf pans. I probably could’ve done three, but I wasn’t sure, so the fourth made a shorter loaf.
This is a delicious cake with a fine crumb that stayed plenty moist over several days, and went over very well with everyone I shared it with. The almond flavor is in the background, with the chocolate and orange at the forefront.
The book has to go back to the library, but there are so many tempting recipes, it’s definitely one worth owning, so it’s going on my mental wishlist.
