Orange Mud Cups

This week I had a go at combining two of my favourite cakes, the chocolate brownie and the lemon drizzle. Only, y'know, with orange because then it would be chocolate orange which is probably better than chocolate lemon. Anyway, the results were astonishing.


YOU WILL NEED
(makes 16 cupcakes)
185g butter
185g dark chocolate
3 eggs
275g golden caster sugar
1 medium-large orange
85g plain flour
40g cocoa powder
6 tablespoons icing sugar


THE METHOD

# Put a small pan of water on to boil, and put a bowl on top. Make sure the bowl doesn't touch the water. Chop up butter and chocolate and melt them together in the bowl. Keep stirring and don't let it burn. That would be horrible. When it's all blended, take it off the stove.



# Turn your oven to Gas 4, 177c, 350f.

# Crack eggs into a large mixing bowl and pour sugar on top. Beat with an electric whisk for AGES. It does take ages. If you can do it with one of them olde fashioned acoustic whisks, then I commend your wrist action.
Whip until the mixture is really thick like an amazing custard.

# Grate the zest of your orange. Put about a quarter of it aside for later, stir the rest into the melty chocolate butter, which should be quite cool now.



# Pour melty chocolate orange butter into the egg mousse and use a spatula to fold it in. Keep stirring gently until it is well blended and you can no longer resist eating some.

# Sift flour and cocoa powder into the mix and stir again until it is looking like a cake batter.



# Set out a cupcake tray with paper cases and spoon about a tablespoon and a half of mixture into each. The cakes are going to rise quite dramatically in the oven, but will shrink again, so be generous. Pop in the oven for 15-20 minutes

(At this point I would like to say that doing them as cupcakes was a bit of a mistake on my part. What would work really well is greasing 8 or so ramekins with butter, splitting the mixture between them, and baking for about 30 minutes.)

# While the cakes are baking, juice your orange and put that bit of left over zest in it. Sift in the icing sugar and dissolve it until you have a syrup.

# Test if cakes are done. They should be reasonably solid around the edges and have a crispy brownie-like crust, but very squishy if you poke the middle. Remove from oven if they're done, give them a couple of extra minutes if not.

# Once they're ready, prick the tops of the cakes with a skewer (or fondue fork) and pour about a tablespoon of the orange syrup onto each cake and leave for a few minutes to absorb. This is sticky and horrible and amazing.





# Eat a cake now if you wish. They are amazing warm, but they do rather fall apart, so get a spoon. If you do the cupcake version, leave them to cool completely and microwave for about 15 seconds to serve. If you do the mini-soufflé version, serve immediately with good vanilla ice-cream and pretend you've made a very posh orange chocolate fondant pudding, when what it really is is a Mud Cup.