A Chocolate Lover's Christmas Dream

Like every other year, I was also this year the one on christmas-dessert-duty. Being bored of my usual go-to desert for occasions like this: a vanilla and chocolate souffle, I decided to create something new: little gingerbread chocolate cakes with orange-chocolate mousse topping and dried oranges.

To prepare this dessert you will need
for the cake

• 3 eggs
• 90g sugar
• 120g plain flour with a teaspoon of baking powder
• 125 ml vegetable oil and 125 ml lukewarm water
• 1 teaspoon of each: ginger and cinnamon 
• 1/2 a teaspoon nutmeg 
• 3 tbsp cocoa powder 

for the topping

• 250ml of heavy cream
• 250g dark chocolate
• 1 orange

for the decoration

• 1 orange

Starting off with the cake you firstly want to preheat the oven on 180 degrees C before separating the egg whites from the yolks and putting them into two different bowls. Next you want to beat up the egg whites and gradually whisk in half of the sugar until firm. Then mix the yolks with the rest of the sugar and the spices.

Take turns stirring in parts of the oil and water and the flour with the baking powder and then fold in the beaten up egg white. Poor the batter into a baking tin layered with baking paper and bake for 20-25 min.

For the topping you also start by separating the eggs. Beat up the egg white and save the yolk for later.

Chop up the chocolate and heat it in a double boiler with a dash of the heavy cream. Whisk up the rest of the cream in a small bowl until stiff.

Let the chocolate mixture cool down until it is lukewarm, then mix in the yolks. Carefully fold in the cream and the beaten up egg white before adding orange zests and the juice of half an orange. Give it a last stir and then cool for at least two hours.

I have dried my oranges using  Zoe Sugg's instructions. But basically you just need to slice up an orange and dry it in the oven for about 3 hours.

When everything was prepared and cooled down, I cut out small circles for the cakes and piped on the topping, using a small star nozzle, before placing half a slice of the dried oranges on top.

Enjoy!

Love,
Em