Orange Zest Buttermilk cake with Chocolate frosting

We had a lovely weekend celebrating S's birthday in Lonavala.Both of us were a little sick , with cough/cold etc, nevertheless it was an enjoyable two days. And whats a birthday without some lovely cake. ;).

S loves orange and I chose to make an orange cake for this birthday. It came out super yum and looked absolutely delicious. :) . This orange cake is quite soft and moist since it has buttermilk in it,the orange taste comes along with every bite as Raaga rightly said so in her post.And the chocolate frosting complements the citrus taste quite well.

Orange Zest Cake with Chocolate frosting

Ingredients

Adapted from Singing Chef

Serves - 8 large pieces
Prep Time - 20 minutes
Cook time - 1 Hour

All purpose flour - 1.5 cups
Unsalted Butter - 1/2 cup [room temperature]
Castor Sugar - 1 cup
Eggs - 2 [room temperature]
Baking powder - 1/2 Tsp
Baking soda - 1/4 Tsp
Salt - 1/2 Tsp
Buttermilk - 100 ml
Vanilla extract - 1 Tsp
Orange juice - extracted from 1 orange
Orange zest - from 1 orange
Orange food color - 1 Tspn

For chocolate frosting

Dark Chocolate - 1/4 cup
Butter - 2 Tbsp
Sugar - 1/4 cup
Milk - 1/4 cup.
Coarsely powdered almonds - 2 Tbsp For decoration

Method

How to make Buttermilk

Take a cup and add a 1 Tbsp white vinegar and fill the cup till the top with room temperature milk . Keep aside for 5-10 minutes. The milk will curdle,give it a stir now.Your buttermilk is ready.You can use as much as needed as per the recipe.

Cake

Preheat oven to 180 deg C and line/grease a 10 inch round tin. I use butter paper to cover the bottom of the cake pan and spray on top of it with non-stick cooking spray

Sift all the dry ingredients - flour,salt,baking powder, baking soda. Set aside.

In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar well.Add one egg at a time and beat well after each addition.Add the buttermilk and vanilla extract and combine well again.Add orange juice and zest and give it a stir. Add the sifted dry ingredients gradually little by little along with orange food color and combine well.

Pour the prepared cake mix into the prepared cake tin and bake at 180 deg C for 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the pan comes out clean.You can then grill the cake for 3-5 minutes at 180 deg C to get the browning on top of the cake if you prefer to.

Cool the cake for 20 minutes before removing it out of the pan. Cool completely before pouring frosting on top of the cake.

Chocolate frosting

You need to use a double boiler method for this.In this method, you don't melt the chocolate directly. Pour a few inches of water into a large saucepan and place a smaller saucepan so that it’s base sits in the water. Put the dark chocolate in the smaller saucepan and bring the water to a low boil.Once the chocolate starts to melt, add in butter, milk and sugar and keep stirring until everything combines well.The mixture will start to froth up and thicken at one point, that's when you switch off the flame.Let it cool for 15-20 minutes.

Once the cake and frosting have cooled down, pour the frosting on top of the cake. Chop up some almonds coarsely and decorate the cake by putting some on the top of the cake.



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