Chocolate Orange Genoise Cupcakes

Summer has been and gone and Autumn is upon us - my favourite season! I love cosy nights in, autumn colours and knitwear. It has also got me thinking about the upcoming festivities and themed baking including halloween, bonfire night and of course - Christmas. Whilst it is a little bit ridiculous that the shops are full of Christmas chocolates already, I took full advantage of chocolate isle to create some indulgent chocolate orange cupcakes to make a wet weekend all the more enjoyable! These cakes are made using a genoise sponge rather than my go to sponge recipe that features in a lot of my cakes. They are topped with a chocolate orange ganache and finished with a segment of Terry's chocolate orange.

They are really simple to make - the decoration could be changed to suit any occasion - a sweet spider for a halloween party or a caramel shard for any bonfire parties you might be going to.

To make 12 chocolate orange cupcakes you will need:

For the sponge:

- 5 Large eggs

- 140g Caster sugar

- 120g Plain flour

- 40g Cocoa powder

- 50g Butter (melted and cooled)

- Zest of 1 orange

- 1 tsp orange extract

For the ganache:

- 300g Dark chocolate (finely chopped)

- 300g Double cream

- 1 tsp orange extract

- 1 tbsp icing sugar

For decoration:

- 12 segments of Terry's Chocolate Orange

To make the ganache:

• Start by making the ganache as this will need a fair amount of time to cool and set for piping. Ganache is really simple to make - gently heat the cream in a pan. Your aiming for it is be just hot enough to melt the chocolate in you do not want the cream to boil. Every so often dip your finger in the pan at the point when it is getting too hot for you to do this - it is ready.
• Take the pan off the heat and add the finely chopped chocolate stirring gently until it melts completely. Mix in the orange extract and icing sugar. Leave the ganache to cool. As it cools it will thicken and will be perfect for piping.
• The icing sugar is an optional extra - I am not a huge fan of dark chocolate so I added a bit of sweetness to take away the bitterness of the chocolate.

To make the sponge:

• Start by heating you oven to 200c fan.
• Genoise sponge is also known as a 'whisked' sponge this is due to the method used to make them. As you can see from the list of ingredients the amount of butter is far less than a standard sponge - in fact all of the ratios are very different. This will result in a very light sponge and the whisking process is essential to get lots of air into the sponge before it goes in the oven.
• Start by whisking your eggs in a large bowl for about 1 minute until the colour lightens, then add the sugar and whisk the mixture on a high speed for about 5 minutes. You are aiming to whisk for long enough that the mixture 'ribbons' when you lift the whisk out. If you draw a figure of 8 in the mixture it should take a few seconds to disappear. If it disappears too quickly - carry on whisking.

• Sieve the flour and cocoa powder and gently fold it into your egg and sugar mixture with the zest of one orange.
• Finally fold in the melted cooled butter. Keep folding until all of the ingredients are incorporated. Too much mixing will knock out the air that all your whisking put in!
• Divide your mixture into 12 cupcake cases and cake for around 12 minutes, until they spring back to the touch and a skewer comes out clean. Allow your cakes to cool completely before decorating.

To decorate:

• Transfer your ganache into a piping bag - pipe a generous portion of your ganache onto each cupcake and finish with a segment of Terry's Chocolate Orange.

And that's all there is to it - yet again I didn't get to try one of these as I wouldn't have even known where to start on working out how many slimming world syns were in one! However, I was assured by my chief taste testers (my Dad and sister) that they were delicious - they certainly smelt it!

Let me know how you get on and what variations you come up with.

Happy baking - Rach x