Chocolate Cake with Orange-Mascarpone Cream

I hope you don’t think I am always on the way – traveling every day around the world. I also like staying at home – especially during this cloudy winter days. It feels like it will never end – this grey cold winter. So here is the best medicine against winter blues – at least for me. It’s name is chocolate – or much better chocolate cake with orange-mascarpone cream! There was also a second reason for preparing something sweet for the weekend – my mother-in-law had birthday last week. So I tried to be nice and made this cake as a present.

I adapted a recipe which I took from one of my favorite food blogs Sunshine’s Kitchen. My relatives do not like „very complicated cakes“, as they say, so I decided to use only the orange-mascarpone cream and the chocolate layers. But I decided to try also something new to me – fondant decoration. And this is the result.

So here is the adapted recipe for the cream. I reduced the amount of sugar and increased the amount of orange juice compared to the original recipe because I tried to make it less sweet 🙂

6 egg yolks
150ml orange juice
100g sugar
1 orange peel
125g butter
250g mascarpone

Put the egg yolks, the sugar, the orange juice and the orange peel in a pot and cook the mixture on an average heat while stirring all the time until it becomes viscous. After taking off the heat add the butter cut into small pieces to the warm orange marmalade. Afterwards put it in a bowl and keep it cool until it becomes firm. To prepare the orange-mascarpone cream I take equal parts from the orange cream and the mascarpone and mix them very well by hand.

And here is the adapted recipe for my absolutely favorite chocolate backed pastry case. Again slightly reduced the amount of sugar compared to the original recipe :

160g butter
260g sugar
2 teaspoon vanilla flavor or the extract of one vanilla
3 eggs well-tempered
240g flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
55g cocoa powder
250ml milk with 1 teaspoon cider vinegar

Heat the oven to 180°C. Use a baking form with 24cm diameter. The bottom of the baking form should be laid out with baking paper and the sides should be coated with butter an cocoa powder. Mix the flour, the cocoa powder, the baking powder and the baking soda in a bowl. Put one teaspoon of cider vinegar into the milk and let them interact for about 10 minutes. In a second bowl prepare a mixture from the soft butter and the sugar. The mixture should be light and fluffy. Add the eggs one by one to the sugar and butter mixture. Next add the vanilla extract. In the next step add the milk and the mixture of dry ingredients to the sugar and the butter. Mix them together in turns starting with part of the dry ingredients and then following with the milk. Make sure to finish with the last part of the dry ingredients. The consistence of the ready mixture is like chocolate mousse so its hard to resist and not try it before its ready backed. Put it in the oven for 45 to 50 minutes. It is ready when there is nothing sticking on your toothpick when trying it in the middle.

I made this cake already two or three times and tried different creams and combinations. It tastes every time amazing. Also the work with fondant as decoration was quite easy and fun. As you see it’s not professional but I think a nice first try. Anyway I was not able to convince my relatives of the fondant decorations. My husband told me there is not enough chocolate on the cake 😉 So I’ll stick to the first version of it using the chocolate icing.