Orange Cake with Grand Marnier Ganache
Description
Orange sour cream cake and orange liqueur-spiked dark chocolate ganache taste pretty good together. The cake recipe is from Gourmet magazine, and I added the ganache and filling. The original recipe would make a nice, simple cake. Prep time may be an underestimate depending on how quickly your cake cools.
Ingredients
| 1 | c | butter (softened) |
| 1 1⁄2 | c | sugar |
| 8 | t | orange zest (I used the zest of 3 oranges) |
| 4 | eggs | |
| 1 | c | sour cream (light is fine) |
| 1⁄2 | c | orange juice (from your naked oranges) |
| 3 | c | flour (all-purpose is fine) |
| 2 | t | baking powder |
| 1 | t | Salt |
| 1 | t | Baking Soda |
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350° F. Lightly butter two 8" square pans, line the bottoms with wax paper, then butter and flour the pans and paper.
- Beat together the butter, sugar and orange zest until butter is fluffy.
- Add in the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.
- Whisk in the sour cream and orange juice.
- Add in the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt, then whisk to combine
- Divide batter between the two pans and bake for ~30 minutes until top is golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
- Cool in the pans for five minutes, then run a knife around the edges and turn the cakes out onto wire racks. Remove the wax paper. If cakes are substantially domed, level with a long, sharp knife. Allow to completely cool before filling and coating.
- See Notes for the recipes for ganache and filling. Prepare both while the cakes are cooling. Do the ganache last.
- Set the bottom cake layer on the removable bottom of a tart pan, or other thin, stiff metal surface. It should be smaller than the cake, but big enough that you could lift the whole cake with your hand underneath it. Cover the bottom layer with a 1/4" thick layer of the filling, adding extra around edges and corners if necessary for leveling. Stack the cakes.
- Fill in the seams with additional frosting as necessary to get smooth sides. Coat the whole cake with a thin layer of frosting as a crumb coat, then allow it to sit in the fridge for a few minutes to firm up.
- Set the wire rack in a sheet pan. Check the temperature of the ganache - it should still be liquid enough to flow, but shouldn't be more than warm. Working quickly, pour most of the ganache on the top of the cake, sweeping some out to the sides with a spatula so that it drips over the edges. Add more ganache to the sides to cover bare spots, and lightly spread with the spatula to smooth. Try not to use the spatula too much, as it will leave marks and mar the smooth finish.
- Allow the ganache to further cool and firm up before you try to move the cake. If setting anything in the cake, like a sugary Mars, do that now, before the ganache firms.
- Once the ganache is relatively firm (a light touch with a finger doesn't leave a divot), take the wire rack out of the sheet pan. Carefully work the cake to the edge of the rack (this is why you have a metal disk beneath it, then either slide directly onto the serving surface, or slide onto your hand and transfer the cake to the serving surface. The latter keeps the serving dish cleaner, but is much scarier.
- Finish decorating on the serving platter. When serving, slice into 24 3" X 1" slices.
Notes
For the ganache
- Chop 12 oz. bittersweet chocolate into small pieces and place in a metal bowl.
- Heat 9 oz heavy cream and 3 T butter just to boiling.
- Pour over the chocolate, and stir until the mixture is shiny and uniform in color and texture
- Stir in 1 1/2 T liqueur
This will cover a 2-layer 8" square cake, with about 1/2 c leftover ganache. You can turn the leftovers (or the whole lot) into truffles. I used Grand Marnier, but any liqueur should do.
For the filling
- Beat 8 oz. cream cheese and 5 Tbs butter together until very fluffy.
- Add in 1 c powdered confectioners sugar and 1/2 tsp orange extract
- Beat until sugar is incorporated and frosting looks light and fluffy
This is nothing special, but it tasted good in the cake and was simple to throw together. You could swap this out with whatever you like - I think citrus curd would be nice, but then you'd still need something to crumb-coat the cake and to act as a dam between the layers (citrus curd is soft and can squeeze out when being used as a cake filler)
