Chilli-chocolate-orange torte

I had quite a lot of difficulty deciding what to name this cake. Firstly, the ingredients – chilli-chocolate-orange? chilli-orange-chocolate? chocolate-chilli-orange? Such dilemmas.

Then there’s the fact that what started out as a truffle torte deviated from the recipe quite a bit – my slightly over enthusiastic whipping of the cream turned the texture more mouse-like, and my fears about it setting prompted me to make a sponge base so I knew I’d actually be able to serve it.

I’m sticking with torte, as ‘chilli-chocolate-orange-sort-of-torte-mouse-cake’ would be a bit too much of a mouthful – but forget that, because what really matters here is the flavour.

This month’s We Should Cocoa challenge, hosted by Choclette at the Chocolate Log Blog, features chilli, and was the push I needed to experiment with the classic combination.

I considered quite a few options, but didn’t really fancy a sponge cake so settled on a torte. Although chilli and chocolate is great as a flavour combination on it’s own, I decided to add orange to try and recreate the ‘Mayan’ flavour of a certain brand of chocolate bar – and it really worked!

Seriously, I cannot recommend strongly enough that you try this recipe – it’s one of the best chocolate recipes I’ve made in ages!

Chilli-chocolate-orange torte (loosely based on this one):

For the base:

• 60g butter
• 60g caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 50g self raising flour
• 10g cocoa powder

Beat together all the ingredients then spread into a greased and lined 9″ round tin. Bake at 180 degreed for about 15 minutes, then remove the sponge from the tin and leave to cool.

For the filling:

• 250g dark chocolate
• 2tbsp golden syrup
• 568ml double cream
• 1tsp chilli powder
• zest of 1 orange

Put the sponge base back in the tin, upside down with the baking paper removed. Gently heat the chocolate, golden syrup and a quarter of the cream over a pan of hot water, the once the chocolate has melted remove from the heat and leave to cool.

Whisk the cream, chilli powder and orange zest with a balloon whisk until thick but not stiff. This is where I went wrong as I was so excited that I’d managed to whisk it by hand that I went a bit too far and ended up with thick cream – oh well!

Fold the cooled chocolate mixture into the cream until well combined and no white streaks are left. Spread onto the base and leave to chill overnight. Dust with cocoa powder and serve, in very small slices!