Chocolate Orange Loaf Cake

Chocolate Orange Loaf Cake is a super tasty treat. It’s moist, sweet and filled with gorgeous orange flavour. It’s also really easy, so perfect for baking with kids this Christmas.

Course Sweets

Cuisine British

Keyword chocolate orange buttercream, chocolate orange cake, easy loaf cake, orange chocolate cake, terry's chocolate orange loaf cake

Prep Time 20

Cook Time 50

Total Time 1 10

Servings 12 Slices

Calories 505kcal

Author Donna

Ingredients

For the Chocolate Orange Loaf Cake:

75 g Chocolate Orange Broken into small chunks
170 g Margarine Or Butter, at room temperature
170 g Caster Sugar
3 Medium Eggs
1 Large Orange Juice and Zest
170 g Self-Raising Flour
30 g Cocoa

For the Chocolate Orange Buttercream

75 g Milk Chocolate Broken into small squares
150 g Butter at room temperature
280 g Icing Sugar
20 g Cocoa
1 teaspoon Orange Extract

To Decorate:

Orange Sprinkles
75 g Chocolate Orange Segments

Instructions

For the Cake:

Carefully melt the chocolate orange in the microwave in 10-second bursts, or over a bain-marie and leave to cool.
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees (fan-assisted) and grease or line a loaf tin.
Whisk together the butter and sugar (this takes around 1 minute with an electric whisk).
Whisk in the eggs, one at a time.
Whisk in the flour and cocoa until the mixture is smooth (2 minutes with an electric whisk).
Add the juice and zest of a large orange and whisk until even.
Pour in the melted chocolate and fold through carefully.
Pour the mixture into the loaf tin and bake in the oven for 50minutes (check after 40 minutes), checking with a skewer to see if the middle is cooked.
Leave to cool fully in the tin, before tipping out onto a wire rack.

To Make the Buttercream:

Melt the milk chocolate carefully in the microwave or over a bain-marie and leave to cool.
Beat the butter until it has softened.
Add the icing sugar and cocoa and beat until the mixture is smooth.
Stir through the chocolate and orange extract until even.
If the buttercream is too stiff, add a little orange juice or milk. If it’s too runny, add a little more icing sugar, or leave to stiffen in the fridge for 1 hour.
When the cake is cooled, spread or pipe on the buttercream and decorate with orange segments and sprinkles if desired.

Notes

I check my cake after 40 minutes, and lightly cover with foil if the top is starting to darken, to avoid burning.
I use a 2lb loaf tin lined with reusable baking paper.
You can swap the orange juice and zest in the cake for 1 teaspoon of orange extract, just make sure you reduce the flour by 30g too and check the bake earlier.
You can also swap the orange chocolate or either milk or dark or the milk chocolate in the icing for dark or orange, depending on how strong you want the flavours to be.
Use butter, not margarine for the icing.
You can swap the orange extract in the buttercream for orange juice, but only use half an orange, and stir in a bit at a time so that you don’t get runny buttercream. Add extra icing sugar if you need to stiffen the mixture.