Cake Fail: Chocolate Orange Cake Fiasco

 I was excited to find this recipe for Chocolate Orange Cake from the Life Love and Sugar blog. I've tried a couple of their recipes before and they were very good, and the cake got rave reviews from other people. Chocolate and orange is such a great combination! I even bought orange extract for the recipe.

What a disappointment! The cakes are supposed to bake at 300F, an extremely low temperature that I've never seen in any other recipe. Not surprisingly after the half hour was up they were nowhere near done. They didn't rise evenly. One side of the cake actually looked like a pancake. I kept them in the oven until a toothpick came out clean, but there was no way I could use these cake layers for the cake I need to bring to book club. 

The taste was disappointing as well. There's a hint of orange but it's not very detectable and doesn't blend well with the chocolate. And there's an unpleasant aftertaste, likely from the artificial extract.  R tried it as well, and thought it was missing something, though he didn't know what. 

The chocolate orange buttercream in the recipe also looked good, and I may try it another time. It doesn't have extract and so would probably taste fine.

Now I'll have to find a use for all this leftover orange extract.



Collapsing into an almost-pancake.


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