👋+: Blood Orange Chocolate Cake

secret ingredients + food tips for seasonal allergies

Allô! 👋

Hello! Welcome to the seasonal sundays section of the good food at home newsletter. This is a weekly-ish paid supplement that aims to provide simple recipes for those seasonal ingredients that may sometimes elude or confound us in the kitchen. The main newsletter will always be free, but by subscribing to seasonal sundays you will not only be able to access extra recipes + the full archive, you’ll also help to support all the researching, cooking, documenting & writing that goes into sharing this newsletter with you. If you’d like to be a part of a growing community and show you value this work, subscribing is easy and costs less than £2 per week (less than £1/week with an annual subscription or free if you refer some friends, and the first 7 days are always free)! Why not give it a shot? We’d love to have you 💛

With spring only just sprung and warmer days soon around the corner, it’s no wonder many of us are longing for fresher finds in produce aisles and market stalls alike. When it comes to fruit, the cellared apples and pears of autumn have by now, for the most part, lost their vibrant vitality. At the same time, summer’s plump plums, bouncing berries, and musky melons* are still several months away.

At the turn of spring, all we really have leftover from winter are citrus fruit. And, at the approach of April, all I really want to eat are late-season blood oranges.

*I may have a problem with the (over)use of alliteration — ample apologies abound

Crimson red, sunset-hued, and sometimes just plain orange, different varieties of blood orange have indeed been in season all winter long. The reason why I felt it appropriate to highlight them now is, as mentioned above, that we’re about to enter a fresh fruit drought. Much of this is location- and climate-dependent of course, but spring is generally not a time of year where many crops are reaching maturity, let alone finding themselves ready to produce fresh juicy ripe fruit for us to joyfully eat.

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in the mood for a different blood orange recipe?

cardamom-spiced lemon madeleines with blood orange glaze

citrus beetroot salad

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The blood oranges currently available near me all seem to be of the Sicilian Moro variety, but at this time of year it is generally more common to come across Sanguinello and/or Tarocco† blood oranges (though Ruby Blood, Delfino, and Smith Red Valencia may also be easier to find, depending on where you live and shop).

One thing to note about blood oranges is that the colour of their peel correlates very poorly with that of their flesh, so don’t be too perplexed if a very orange specimen reveals itself to be hiding rather sanguineous juices while a fully blushing skin turns out to be nothing more than a curtain for a very plain-looking orange interior. Personally, I find the guesswork and surprise to all be part of the fun!

†fun fact: apparently, the Tarocco variety of blood orange contains more vitamin C than any other citrus fruit!

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If you can’t find blood oranges near you, regular navel and Valencia oranges or other similar citrus like cara caras should also work very well in this chocolate cake recipe. As someone who previously could not stand the combination of orange and chocolate together, I do hope you’ll give this recipe a go even if you do feel hesitant about the pairing — it really works incredibly well. Nonetheless, if you’d rather eat your oranges fresh and keep them off a cake, that is also A-okay! The cake is still marvellous on its own and, all those who tried it agree, very much worth a try even without the colourful caramelised citrus on top.

blood orange beetroot chocolate cake 🍊

Yes, you read that right, there are beets in this cake. I hesitated to put beetroot in the title at first because you can’t really taste the beets (they’re mostly there for moisture), but then I felt like some of you might feel misled when reading the ingredients list, so decided to put it right in there, front and centre.

The idea for this cake came to me when I had lots of beets and lots of blood oranges to use. They are lovely together in a salad, but I wasn’t quite in the mood for developing another salad recipe. I love chocolate and beets together in all sorts of permutations (there’s just something about beets’ deep earthiness that helps to ground and beautifully balance the sweet bitterness of chocolate), and I also know that chocolate and orange is a common combination, so decided to put it all together to arrive at this delightful dessert.

In my opinion, the result is indulgent and unassuming all at once. (It also happens to make a wonderful showpiece for anyone you might like to impress.)

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INGREDIENTS