mini chocolate and orange marble bundt cakes

… as many of you will know I adore chocolate orange.  For me it is the ultimate combo of flavours.  The sharp intense zing of the citrus pairs so beautifully with the rich dark chocolate.  Of course my love of this flavour combination started early when, as a child my mums mum, grandma Jennie would visit with secret stashes of Terry’s Chocolate Orange in her hand bag.  My brother and I knew she’d have them in there and we’d be so excited about receiving them but she would make us wait until near to exploding with excitement she would take each of us aside and slowly reveal the secret goodies.  Grandmas was a wonderful baker of cakes and she passed this love of baking down to mum and of course mum passed it on to me.  Grandma Jennie’s speciality was a marmalade cake which i’ve made here on the blog before and mum has a large arsenal of recipes for beautiful cakes, her lemon cake being the most popular, so I thought i’d celebrate this Mother’s Day with a cake for mum…

mini chocolate and orange marble bundt cakes
these are so easy to make and so lovely to serve up they would make an ideal treat for any mum today.  They look so cute and special and I love that everyone gets one… i’ve filled the little bundt shapes with a simple chocolate ganache but you could easily swap this our for a confectioners custard or even an orange curd.  I only have 6 mini bundt moulds so there was plenty of left-over for a small loaf-style cake which has turned out wonderfully and will freeze really well… all in all a win-win, now I just have to find out a way to post these little bundts down to mum in London…

pre-heat the oven to 170C fan and prepare your mini bunt moulds with a little oil and line your 1lb loaf tin, or use a 20cm deep, loose bottomed cake tin or a large loaf tin which you’ll need to grease and line with a strip of baking parchment.

for the marble cake mix
200g sugar
200g butter
200g self raising flour
3 large free-range eggs
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
the juice of half an orange
the finely grated zest of a whole orange
a little milk

for the ganache
100g chocolate
200ml double cream

to make the cake batter, beat the sugar and butter until light and fluffy, then add the eggs one at a time with a portion of flour folded in between each egg… you should end up with a gloriously thick cake batter which you can now split evenly into two bowls

to one bowl, beat in a tablespoon or two of milk… you want the batter to just drop off a spoon, then spoon the batter into your cake tin or moulds in little dollops… I place three dollops evenly around my bundt moulds and four large spoonfuls into the loaf tin

to the other bowl add the cocoa powder, orange juice and orange zest and beat in… once full combined add this, again in spoonfuls and dollops, to the cake tins.

once all the batter is distributed unevenly between the cake tins and moulds take a long knife or skewer and insert it into the batter and swirl around until the two cake batter mix up a little

bake in the oven until golden and risen… for the little loaf tin that was 30 mins, for the mini bundt moulds it was roughly 20 mins – set aside to cool whilst you make the ganache

break the chocolate into small chunks and place in a bowl, then heat the cream in a saucepan and once it’s piping hot, pour it over the chocolate.  Stir until the chocolate has melted and then set aside… if you want pouring ganache then use it straight away, if you want a more truffle-like texture let it settle slightly before using

as my recipe uses 3 large free-range eggs i’m linking these bundts to the brilliant we should cocoa founded by Tin and Thyme and hosted this month by Lancashire Food

they’re also going over to Treat Petite hosted by The Baking Explorer and Cakeboi who has set the theme of

i’m also linking them to my own Simply Eggcellent link-up which celebrates everything egg!

eat and of course, enjoy!