Orange Chocolate Chunk Cake

Every week I'm supposed to make 3 cakes for the restaurant; two layered, iced cakes, and one uniced cake.

I'm really enjoying making the uniced cakes. They are way less stressful than the frosted cakes, and I love a cake you can eat warm. I usually try some combination of fruit and often chocolate like here, here and here. These are the types of cake that you can eat slice after slice and not feel you've over-indulged! (you decide if this is good or bad.)

Today I present to you Ina Garten's Orange Chocolate Chunk Cake (from Barefoot Contessa Parties!), found on Leite's Culinaria. This extremely moist cake boasts bright orange flavor and smooth, sweet chocolate, and can be baked in loaves, bundt pans or cupcakes. This cake could be yours for your very own this weekend!

four naked oranges and a pile of zest

Ingredients:

2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature

2 cups sugar

4 extra-large eggs (I used most of 5 large eggs)

1/4 cup orange zest (from 3 or 4 orange)

3 cups AP flour, plus 2 T, separated

1/2 t baking soda

1/2 t baking powder

1 t salt

1/4 cup fresh squeezed orange juice

3/4 cup buttermilk

1 t vanilla

2 cups good quality semi-sweet chocolate chips/chunks

For the syrup:

1/4 cup fresh squeezed orange juice

1/4 cup sugar

For the ganache (optional):

8 oz good-quality semi-sweet chocolate chips

1/2 cup heavy cream

1 t instant coffee (optional)

mmm fresh orange juice

Preheat oven to 350. Butter and flour a bundt pan.

Cream the butter and sugar in an electric mixer for 5 minutes, or until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, then the orange zest.

Sift together 3 cups of flour, baking soda, powder and salt. In another bowl, combine the vanilla, orange juice and buttermilk. Add the flour and buttermilk mixtures, alternating in three additions, beginning and ending with the flour.

Toss the 2 cups of chocolate with the 2 tablespoons of flour (to make sure it doesn't sink through the cake to the bottom). Stir the chocolate into the cake batter, then pour into the pan, smooth the top and pop into the oven. Bake for 45 minutes to an hour until a tester comes out clean.

I did not wait long enough to remove my first cake...I've realized my lovely bundt pan retains heat longer than usual, so I now I wait about 3 hours before attempting to remove it. Your pan might be different than mine...the recipe recommends only waiting 10 minutes before removing.

The upside of this was that we got to eat the first cake at the restaurant and it was to die for.

prematurely removed cake wreckage.

It is best to apply the syrup while the cake is warm. Make the syrup by boiling together the 1/4 cup OJ with the 1/4 cup sugar and spoon or brush over the cake.

Beautiful, whole, chocolate-speckled orange cake.

Let the cake cool completely. If desired, melt the chocolate, cream and coffee together and pour over the cake. I think it is plenty chocolatey without the ganache.

Rice Pudding

I'll give you some rice pudding porn to drool over while I ramble for a couple paragraphs here...

I must tell you that there was a bit of a break in posting here on The Fox Fix because one fateful morning last week I tried to take a picture of my glazed cranberry bundt cake, and, not for lack of trying, blurry is all I got. (see below).

The camera refused to focus, and that was all there was to it. I was very loath to inform Eric of this news, as I am just coming out of an extremely-irresponsible-with-very-important-things stage (I hope). I did tell of this awful thing, with much promising to be more careful with expensive devices around things like butter and sugar and heat (um, my life right now?).

HOWEVER, and VERY FORTUNATELY, today I picked up the camera with fearful expectation and it WORKED. It's good as new! So either God fixed our camera, or I can pretend that another week banging around in my purse actually did the thing some good.

In celebration, tonight I bring you: RICE PUDDING.

As my roommates senior year of college can attest, I practically lived on rice pudding that winter. (with rum. have I mentioned rum yet?)

4 Reasons Why Rice Pudding is the Ultimate Yum:

1. It's basically the definition of comfort food. Warm, creamy, easy going and sweet (but not too sweet).

2. It's so simple: Rice, milk, vanilla and sugar. Anything else after that is just gravy. (hopefully not literally.)

3. It's also very adaptable- like a blank canvas. Add rum or fruit or nuts or spices or chocolate or anything you want, really.

4. Can we please talk about the texture? For as many gross comparisons as you can come up with for the consistency, there are twice as many reasons to put it in your mouth and feel its sweetness spread to the farthest reaches of your taste buds...

Tonight I used Arborio Rice (1 cup), whole milk (4 cups), vanilla bean paste (1/2 T) and sugar (1/2 cup). In celebration of winter flavors, I also threw in some orange and lemon zest. I put it all in a pot and then simmer on low heat for about 40 minutes, stirring every few minutes or so, until the milk was mostly absorbed. I then stirred in a little cream (about 1/2 cup), a step which you can take or leave. Also, if your rice is still too crunchy when the milk is almost gone, just add a little more milk and keep on cooking.

Eric and I enjoyed our pudding while watching Bedtimes Stories on our new netflix account. I wouldn't really recommend this movie, but it was fun to watch.

Next time, I'm going to add some cardamon and maybe an egg, and experiment with starting it on the stove and ending in the oven. I'll keep you updated.

UPDATE: Perfect Rice Pudding found: FOUND. Here.

Above, we have the ingredients for pudding, minus the rice and plus our dining room. The flowers are from our friend Alex who came over for Thanksgiving and are starting to look 2 weeks old. The window above the pew is a new addition- I got it from a local warehouse and cleaned it up and painted it blue to matched one of the colors in the border. We like our house :)