When I was at school the first all-in-one cake I ever made was called Lemon Crisp. So I thought I would re-invent the cake today by adding cocoa and changing the lemon juice for orange juice to make Easy Chocolate Orange Cake. After suffering the day from hell; having the car pebble dashed by a digger on a building site and then having the car dented by a runaway shopping trolley 2 minutes later, my children and I were happy to sit down with a cup of tea and a slice of cake at the end of a horrendous day! Who says lightning doesn’t strike twice?
A friend of mine from Australia recently e-mailed me to say that my blog looked great but it was too bad that she couldn’t cook. Well this one’s for you Julie, no skill required, just reading and whisking!
This cake would be the ideal cake for children to make for Father’s Day and would also be great for a school cake bake. It stays really moist and tastes just a good on day 3 as it does on day 1.
I never fail to get excited when I see a bowl of ingredients like this ….
turn into this…
and after a sugar orange glaze, this.
After all the excitement of the day I forgot to cut the cake up into 3 rows of 4 slices for the photo but you could do it how you like!
I do hope you try my easy all-in-one cake but for more easy cake inspiration you might like:
Easy Ginger Avocado Cake with Lemon Drizzle
Birthday Cake (All-in-One Vanilla Sponge)
Why not pin for later?
Easy Chocolate Orange Cake
Easy Chocolate Orange Cake - all in one chocolate cake moistened with orange juice with a crispy sugar topping.
Ingredients
- 175 g / 6oz Margarine or butter softened
- 175 g / 6oz Caster sugar
- 160 g Self-raising flour
- 1 tsp Baking powder
- 15 g Bourneville cocoa powder
- 3 eggs
- 1 tbsp milk
- Orange sugar topping:
- 50 g / 2oz Caster sugar
- 2 dsp Orange juice freshly squeezed
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180°C.
- Grease and line a 23 x 23cm 9” x 9” baking tin.
- Sift together the flour, cocoa and baking powder.
- Add the rest of the ingredients and whisk for a couple of minutes with an electric mixer or 3 minutes with a whisk.
- Bake for 40 minutes or until the cake is springy to the touch.
- Allow the cake to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before transferring it to a wire rack.
- Mix together the orange juice and caster sugar and spread over the top of the cake.
- When the topping has set cut the cake into 12 slices.
Recipe Notes
For the original Lemon Crisp version use 175g self-raising flour and leave out the cocoa. Then for the topping use lemon juice instead of orange juice.
This sounds lovely. Sometimes chocolate cakes can be very rich but I imagine adding the orange helps
Thanks Candace, it is a lovely light cake:-)
This sounds delicious, been looking for a decent cake recipe to make, thanks for sharing.
Simon
Thanks Simon:-) Enjoy!
Going to have to cook this for my son. Chocolate Orange is his favourite flavour combination & he loves cakes!
Great, I can’t remember if there’s any grated orange rind in the mix but would be great to pep up the orange flavour:-)
The sticky top looks lovely!
The orange definitely adds an extra dimension.
Hi
Thank you for such a simple recipe. I think there was a typo – please can you confirm the quantity of orange juice to use? Many thanks,
Esther
Hi Esther, I have just been to the garage to get out my old school excercise book (the recipe is based on this) and the recipe is correct just old fashioned, it is 2 dsp ie dessert spoons:-)
The DSP stands for dessert spoons I believe.