Recipe - (Posh) Giant Jaffa Cake!

by Bex

Now, I had marginal success with this cake but have some tips and changes to hopefully make it successful should you (or I) try it (again).  Don't get me wrong, it was absolutely delicious, but the impressive, fancy climax to our meal it was not.  It did, however, provide some ongoing entertainment throughout the evening!  I made it when Roz and B came over for dinner recently (I made slow-cooked lamb kleftiko too) and they can vouch for the flavour - Roz's bowl was almost licked clean!  I had a lot of fun making the recipes - both found in my first copy of BBC Good Food magazine which I subscribed to due to a promotion for a free copy, then they offered me 3 further issues for £3 (not to be sniffed at but a classic trick to hook you in!) and I haven't decided yet if I will just continue it or cancel after the 3 issues.  I have to say, it is a magazine I buy occasionally and I do often love a lot of the recipes and tend to have a go at a few of them so I may stay subscribed at the normal price (£18 for 6 issues), we'll see.

Anyway, here's the recipe as I would make it next time, including my tips and a photo of how it's supposed to look...

Serves 10

Ingredients:
Jelly:
juice of 5 large oranges (about 500ml)
[save the zest of all oranges (1 to decorate, 4 for cake)]
100g golden caster sugar
6 gelatine leaves

Cake:
250g butter, softened, plus extra for greasing
300g golden caster sugar
4 large eggs
100g full-fat natural yoghurt
300g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
zest of 4 large oranges

Chocolate Ganache:
300ml double cream
200g milk chocolate, finely chopped
100g dark chocolate, finely chopped

To finish:
The orange zest saved above
Apricot jam (I used ginger jam for a bit of zing)

Method:
Make the jelly the night before or a few hours in advance.  Grease a 20cm round cake tin and line with cling film.  Remove the zest from the oranges and set aside.

Tip the orange juice and sugar into a pan and heat gently to dissolve the sugar.  Meanwhile, soak the gelatine leaves in cold water for a few minutes until soft.  Remove the gelatine from the water and squeeze out any excess and add gelatine to the warm juice mixture, stirring until dissolved.  Pour the liquid into the lined cake tin and chill for at least 4 hours or overnight.

Heat oven to 160oC (fan 140oC) and line a 23cm round cake tin with baking parchment.  Tip all the cake ingredients into a large mixing bowl and combine with an electric whisk until smooth.

Spoon into the tin and smooth the surface.

Bake in the centre of the oven for 55 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.  Cool in the tin for 15 minutes, then invert onto a wire rack and leave to cool completely.

Now make the ganache.  Heat the cream in a small pan until hot.  Put the chopped chocolate in a heatproof bowl and pour over the cream, leave for 10 mins, then mix well - you should be left with a smooth chocolate sauce.  (This is where I would change it a little and add the chocolate to the cream as it didn't all melt and I had to put it in the microwave for a few seconds and wait longer for it to set.)

Leave at room temperature until the ganache cools and thickens a little (you can put it in the fridge to speed this up but keep an eye on it as it will set quickly).  (Again this is where I would change things again as I would wait much longer than I did.  It definitely went wrong because it must have still been too warm but I was so concerned about it setting and it seemed thick enough while only just still being runny enough to drizzle like in the picture.  Next time I would definitely wait longer and not worry about drizzling at all, the thick ganache didn't dribble nicely for me anyway, after I drizzled some over the sides and smoothed the top, a lot of the ganache around the edge also slid off the sides!)

To assemble the cake, place it on a cake stand and trim the top to give you a flat surface.  Warm the apricot (or ginger) jam until a little runny and paint it over the top of the cake.  (I would wait longer here before the next stage to ensure it is completely cool again.)  Flip the orange jelly out of its tin and position on top.

Using a palette knife, swirl the chocolate ganache over the orange jelly, letting it dribble down the sides of the cake a little.  Serve straight away or within 24 hours.

Per slice: 822kcals, protein 10g, carbs 85g, fat 49g, sat fat 29g, fibre 2g, sugar 64g, salt 0.8g

Wow, I never actually realised at the time just quite how calorific it is!

Anyway, what happened next is where it turns from looking a bit pathetic to quite hilarious.  The cake was finished just before Roz and B arrived, the lamb was in the oven and after taking it out to rest while the potatoes went back in to crisp up for 30 minutes, the cake had splodged a bit more.  It was hot in the kitchen and the jelly was obviously melting and sliding off with the slightly warm ganache and the heat in the room.  The problem was, it wouldn't fit in the fridge so we just had to leave it there.  We knew it would still taste the same.

We went to sit in the living room with our drinks while we waited for dinner to be ready.  When I went back through to finish dinner, it was like this...

 
And by the time we all sat down to eat there was a full on avalanche...

Not quite the beautiful masterpiece I planned!  As we hoped though, it still tasted good and we enjoyed the sloppy mess!

The cake itself was quite dense but had a lovely zesty flavour, the jelly was sloppy but perfectly orangey and the ganache was awesome!