Orange Cupcakes with Chocolate Fudge Icing.

I generally like to find recipes for the ingredients that I already have instead of buying ingredients for a specific recipe, unless it's a special occasion or something I really want to try. I've been tempted by orange cupcakes for a while but usually I only have tiny tangerines which just wouldn't work. Therefore, I leapt at the chance to make them when I had some proper oranges.

Ingredients:

85g butter

85g caster sugar

1 egg

85g flour

25g ground almonds

1tsp vanilla extract

Juice and grated rind of 1 orange

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180˚C. 

2.Cream the butter and mix in the sugar.

3. Lightly beat the egg and then add to the butter and sugar.

4. Fold in the flour and ground almonds.

5. Add the vanilla extract, orange juice and grated rind and combine thoroughly.

6. Distribute the mixture between 12 cake cases and bake for 20-25 minutes or until lightly golden.

This is where I got a little adventurous. Everyone knows how perfectly chocolate and orange go together *cough* Terry's Chocolate Orange *cough*. Melting chocolate and drizzling it on top was an option, but a little too safe for my liking. I decided to use this chocolate fudge icing recipe and was slightly mislead by the piped icing in the picture. I was under the impression that the consistency of it would be thick enough to pipe on but it most certainly was not. I followed the recipe exactly (in fact, I only used 70% of the milk otherwise it would've been a complete disaster) and it was quite runny.

I removed the cases from the cakes, dunked the base and sides of the cakes into the icing and put them upside down on the plate. I then left them to set in the fridge for a few hours before realising that if I turned the back the right way round then they look like cake cases made of chocolate!

You may or may not have noticed an increase in the quality of my photos in this post as I got a DSLR this week. It's the Nikon D5100 with the standard 18-55mm lens. So far I'm very impressed with it but I'm still learning what are the best settings/ways to use it so bare with me! I've found a variety of online resources to get the most out of my food photography but I found this guide from Sally's Baking Addiction particularly useful.

I'm also now on Google+! I've had it ever since it began but never understood it as I have no friends who use it. However, I have now discovered that if you set it up correctly then it's a fabulous way to find like-minded people as well as discover and share some wonderful recipes and blogs. I found Chef Dennis Littley's post on 'How to be a Good Plusser' exceptionally useful, as well as his various other posts about Google+. You'd be a fool not to jump on the bandwagon now!

Enjoy!

CakesforDorothy xoxo

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