The Whole-Orange Cake with Protein and Sourdough

1. Make sure Your ingredients are all at room temperature.
2. If your oranges aren’t untreated, make sure to scrub them really well, to get rid of any unwanted chemicals on the skin.
3. Pre-heat your oven to 350°F/175°C.

Prepare Your Cake Pan

1. Butter an 8-inch square baking pan and line it with baking parchment.
2. While you can theoretically just push it in there if you don’t mind messy corners, here is a way to line it a little more neatly:
3. Measure 2 pieces of baking parchment (one for the sponge, one for the jelly later) so you have about 1-2 inch/2-4 cm overhang on both sides.
4. Place the pan in the center of it and, using scissors, starting at the corners, cut the parchment in all 4 corners diagonally towards each pan corner.
5. Now you can very easily arrange the parchment neatly in the pan without scrunched bits by allowing the cut pieces to fold in naturally where they want to go, then pushing the remaining paper over the edges to hold it in place.

Blending The Orange And Protein

1. Slice off the top and bottom bit of the orange, just to get off any woody parts. Roughly chop it into chunks, peel and all, removing any seeds you might find.
2. Blend until it is the consistency of smooth apple sauce. You should have roughly 1 cup/250ml.
3. Now add the Greek yogurt and protein powder and blend again until smooth. This ensures you have no clumps of protein in your cake.

Gently Stir in your Sourdough Discard

1. Drop the sourdough discard into your orange mix and stir or gently whisk it in by hand. The remaining formed gluten strands in it will help your cake rise, so ideally don’t blend it in.

Creaming Butter and Sugar

1. In a large bowl, using a hand mixer (electric mixer), cream the room temperature butter with the sugar until light and fluffy. This is where your orange sponge gets its volume and fluffy texture.
2. Add one egg at a time and whisk until incorporated and smooth.

Add the Orange-Protein Mix

1. Now pour in that orange mix, which at this point looks and smells like a delicious orange cream popsicle. Don’t be tempted to try it though. It’s (at this point) tricking you. Have a wild guess how I know…
2. Use your hand mixer to beat it all together, taking a few minutes to get it really well whisked together.
3. At this stage your batter will look like it’s splitting a bit. Don’t panic, we’ll solve that in the next step. If your ingredients were at room temperature, you’ll be fine. (If not your cake will be a little denser, but still delicious.)

Stir the Flour and Raising Agents

1. Add baking soda, baking powder and salt to your flour in a medium bowl and give it a quick stir. The one teaspoon of each may sound like a lot, and is certainly more than the original used, but I found the protein powder orange mix needs a bit of help to rise to perfection.

Mix the Dry into the Wet

1. Drop the flour into the wet ingredients and briefly whisk with your hand mixer until you have a creamy, homogenous batter. Most of the signs of splitting should be gone now and it’ll look like a typical, very marmalade-y scented sponge batter.
2. Don’t overmix to avoid developing the gluten too much. This ensures a tender and fluffy cake.

Bake The Whole-Orange Protein Cake

1. Pour your batter into the lined cake pan and smooth the top a little. Bang the pan on the counter a few times to have any big bubbles rising to the top and pop.
2. Other than most sponges, this one will not “melt” into having a super smooth top while baking. So any smoothing you want to happen should be done before baking.
3. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until your kitchen smells delicious, is golden and an inserted toothpick comes out clean or with a few moist crumbs attached.
4. I tend to rotate any baked goods in my oven by 180 degrees after the first half of baking time, as my oven (like most) bakes unevenly.
5. Allow to cool for 5-10 minutes in the pan, then grab the corners of the parchment and lift it onto a cooling rack to cool completely without condensation at the bottom.
6. Whatever you do, don’t peel off the parchment yet. We still need it on the cake!
7. Now you could, if you wanted, absolutely just snack on this as is or with a simple orange juice and icing sugar glaze on top. And you will feel tempted, that’s for sure. Because it smells intoxicating.
8. But we can do better, so bear with me here. Just 2 easy bits and you are in Chocolate-Orange Heaven.

The Orange Jelly

1. While your sponge is baking, make your real orange jelly.
2. Line your still slightly greasy baking pan with the second piece of baking parchment.

Zest The Oranges and Chop the Flesh

1. For maximum flavor in the jelly zest both oranges into a small saucepan.
2. Using a sharp knife, cut off top and bottom from your oranges.
3. Resting them on one of the freshly created flat pieces, slice off the skin, following the curve of the orange, including white pith, leaving you with just the flesh and a few membraned.
4. Roughly chop, removing any stray seeds.
5. Use your Nutribullet again to blend them until they are the consistency of smooth apple sauce (just without the skin this time) and transfer to your saucepan.

Cook the Jelly

1. Add the sugar and, stirring, let it come to a very brief boil until the sugar is dissolved. Take off the heat.
2. In a small heat proof bowl mix your 2-3 teaspoons of gelatin with 2-3 tablespoons of water.
3. Microwave for about 10 seconds (no more!) until just liquid.
4. Add 1-2 tablespoons of your orange mix to the gelatin, stir and then pour the whole thing into your zesty orange juice while mixing.
5. Whisk a little longer until everything is well combined.
6. Pour the orange jelly mix into the parchment lined baking pan and transfer to the fridge for about 20-30 minutes until the cake is cooled and the jelly is set.

Assemble Your Jaffa Style Orange Cake

1. Once the jelly is firm enough (Tap gently with a finger. If nothing sticks and it feels firm to the touch it’s ready) take it out of the baking pan using the parchment corners to lift it out.
2. Now comes the only (slightly) tricky part:
3. Lining it up on one side, flip the whole thing over onto your orange sponge. It should fit pretty well as it was made in the same pan.
4. Peel off the parchment and admire your work. Neat, eh?
5. Grab the corners of the parchment and put the whole thing back into the baking pan then put it into the freezer for about 10-20 minutes. While I’m a fan of eating cakes warm, this isn’t one of them.
6. Just one more step and it’s a quick one.

Temper Your Chocolate

1. In a microwave safe bowl add 2/3 of your chocolate (chips or chopped) together with the coconut oil if using and melt it in the microwave (or in a bowl over a water bath, not touching the water) until melted.
2. I usually use a 1 minute burst, wait a few seconds, stir, then do another minute or two, let it sit for a minute then stir again until it’s melted. The waiting time allows the center of the chocolate pieces to melt without causing the already warm parts to burn.
3. Ideally you want it to be at roughly 120°F/50°C at this point. Or….very warm to the touch. It should be hot enough to melt the remaining third of the chocolate without the need to heat it again.
4. Drop in the last third of the chocolate, let it stand for another minute and stir again. Your chocolate should look very shiny and smooth now.
5. Allow to cool a few minutes or until it reaches about 85°F/30°C (feeling just a little warm now.)

Top Your Orange Cake With Chocolate

1. Grab your now fairly cool cake from the freezer.
2. Get your offset spatula ready. You want to be quick as soon as the chocolate hits the cake as the cold jelly will have it set fast.
3. Pour most of the still liquid chocolate over the top and immediately start spreading it towards the sides and corners. You only have seconds until it sets, so the cake pan helps to keep it from drizzling off the sides, meaning you don’t have to be as precise with your moves.
4. Once most of the top is covered, you can use a silicone spatula to drizzle the last bit of the melted chocolate over any uncovered corners.
5. Smooth a little, taking care not to touch any bits that are already firming, as that will cause messy bit (though frankly, a bit messy it good).
6. If you like, drag a fork gently through the still slightly soft chocolate to create a wave pattern.
7. Then allow it to set for a few minutes. No fridge time needed. The cold jelly will do the job beautifully.

Serve Your Jaffa-Style Snack Cake with Protein

1. To get neat slices, use a sharp knife that you dipped into hot water and whipped dry.
2. Or embrace the shattering chocolate!
3. Enjoy your cake, feeling all virtuous because you snuck in 3 whole oranges, 7g protein and sourdough! And still get a super satisfying Jaffa-like experience.