One of the reasons I enjoy BAKED Explorations so much is the enthusiasm of its authors Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito. Take the Double Chocolate Loaf with Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Spread for example. The boys from BAKED made such a convincing bid for chocolate-as-breakfast that I cannot imagine enjoying this intensely chocolaty cake at any other time of day. Of course, the wildly delicious recipes is the other huge draw for this cookbook too!
Although the recipe calls for topping the sliced chocolate cake with peanut butter cream cheese spread, I had another idea in mind. I have no doubt that the cream cheese spread is delicious because I made something similar very recently. I highly recommend it! When I think breakfast, marmalade immediately comes to mind. Chocolate and orange? Sign me up! I have a long love affair with Jacob’s Orange Club and it just so happens that I have a huge craving for some now. To emphasize the orange flavour, I rubbed orange zest into the granulated sugar of the cake. As for marmalade, I slathered on some of my homemade Seville Moro Marmalade. Since the chocolate cake has such a deep chocolate taste from cocoa powder and chopped dark chocolate, the tart and slightly bitter edge of the marmalade really brighten up the taste. I prefer to slice the cake rather thin, about 1cm thick.
What is most amazing about this cake is its ease to make. Following the quick bread method, the hardest part is to measuring out the ingredients. My 9x5 loaf pan is not quite true to measure so the exuberant rise threatened to overrun. Next time I would probably take a few scoops of the batter to a muffin pan just to make sure the loaf cake would turn out prettier. That’s only a very small quip. Since this cake is so easy to make, I can imagine baking it up first thing Sunday morning to start my day in the most decadent fashion!
You can find the recipe at BAKED Sunday Mornings and check out how the cake turned out for other bakers.