Halloween Chocolate and Orange Cake

So it is Halloween Night! After work I started baking, and the end result was yummy.... except the cake didn't have time to chill properly, but nobody complained. I used the chocolate sponge form the BBC Good Food Website...and the orange cream is a last minute made up creation.

Halloween Chocolate and Orange Cake

For the sponge
150 g self-raising flour
3 tbsp cocoa powder
175 g butter at room temperature
175 g golden caster sugar
1 tsp baking powder
3 eggs
1-3 tbsp milk
100 g 70% dark chocolate, melted and cooled

For the cream
250 g soft cheese
zest of 2 oranges
juice of 1 orange
3-5 tbsp icing sugar
150 ml double cream
1 tsp powdered gelatine
orange food colouring

For the decoration
50g dark chocolate
black icing
edible icing pen-white

Heat the oven to 180 C. Butter and base line your 23 cm round cake tin with baking parchment.

Put all the cake ingredients except the chocolate in a  large bowl. Beat them together with an electric mixer until you have a creamy mixture, then fold in the melted chocolate. Add a little more milk if the mix is too stiff- it should fall easily form a spoon.

Pour the cake mix into the prepared tin and bake in the oven for 20 -25 minutes or until the sponge springs back when pressed. Cool the cake than cut in half with a cake leveller.

For the filling, mix all ingredients in a big bowl except the double cream and the gelatine.

Heat the double cream in a heavy based pan to boil. Take off from the heat and add the powdered gelatine and mix well to dissolve any lumps. Cool down the mixture to room temperature  then add to the orange mixture. Work together the two mixture and add the food colouring(the amount you need depends on the brand, so use as recommended) and put to the fridge to harden a little.

In the meantime you can prepare the spider...I didn't want the scary one....I am quite happy with a lovely looking spider, so make two balls one should be smaller than the other to create the head. And roll 8 thin "ropes" for the legs. Bend the legs slightly and leave it to dry so it would hold the leg shape for a while after decoration....Draw eyeballs and ...well it is ready.

When the cake is cooled and the orange mixture is solidish, spread one layer to the bottom sponge then sandwich on top the other sponge layer. Spread the remaining of the orange cream on top. Melt 50g of chocolate above boiling water in a bowl and add some double cream if you think it is too thick to pour, then starting from the middle start pouring the chocolate in a spiral movement until you reach the edge of the cake. With a cake tester or any other stick start to draw lines from the middle of the cake to the edge to create the web effect.

Place the spider on top and chill for at least 2 hours.

Enjoy:)