blood Orange and raw cocoa bundt cake

Growing up as a child, my favorite cake that my mother would bake, was a cocoa and orange bundt cake. Of course, it was buttery rich and the sugar content was high and nothing wrong with that, occasionally that’s just fine, but I do want to stress that baking with oils, that are so much better for you, is totally possible. In my attempt to decrease processed white sugar, I learned that using solely date sugar wasn’t possible here. As date sugar doesn’t dissolve, the result was a too dense cake. By combining date sugar with sugar, I managed to find a balance that is perfect, both in terms of sweetness and texture. I hope you’ll love it as much as we do, and surely, if blood oranges aren’t available, normal oranges work just as well.

Ingredients, fits a 1,4 liter mould

2 blood oranges

200 ml flavor neutral olive oil

140 g date sugar

200 g sugar

3 eggs

250 g all purpose flour

70 g raw cocoa

1 tsp baking soda

0,5 tsp fine salt

1 tsp vanilla powder

More oil for greasing

Icing (optional):

Caster sugar

Juice from 1 blood orange

Directions

Grate the orange zest finely and squeeze the juice out of the oranges.

Whip oil and the two kinds of sugar in a large bowl. Adding eggs, one at a time and whip again. I prefer letting my stand mixer do this but if you don’t have any, you can surely do it by hand. Mix the dry ingredients in an other bowl.

Add the flour mixture to the large bowl in two seperate additions, alternating with the orange juice and make sure to whip well after each addition. End by stirring in the orange zest.

Grease your mould well with oil and pour the batter into it. Bake at middle rack at 180 degrees Celsius for 35-40 minutes. If your mould is either bigger or smaller, you might have to adjust the baking time, a smaller one would probably need a bit longer and a larger one a bit shorter time. Sticking a toothpick into it, it should come out with a bit of dough sticking to it, not clean.

Serve with extra blood oranges, and if you feel like it, make a beautiful pink icing with caster sugar and juice from a blood orange.