Blood orange and chocolate with cake

Jeremy’s more sanguine cousins make an appearance once a year, and vanish in February, the cruelest month of all. What better way to pin them down than with cake? Paired with chocolate*, you might even call it bittersweet.

The Cake:
2 sticks butter
2 cups white sugar
4 large eggs

zest of two large oranges

juice of one large orange

1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
pinch salt
3 cups flour
1/4 – 1/3 cup baking cocoa (Might we recommend hunting down the good stuff?)
1/3 cup vanilla yogurt

The  Topping:
juice of one large orange
8 oz cream cheese
1 tbsp butter
1/3 cup powdered sugar

Stoke the fires. You want the center of the oven to be 350 degrees by the time you’re ready with the batter.

Grease and flour a bundt pan. While it may seem irrational to bake an entire cake, only to leave out the middle, we assure you that the hole in the heart of this dense cake is for its own good.

Sequester the flour, leavening agents, salt and cocoa. Let them consider their combined fate while you move on.

Beat the butter and sugar into submission. This may take a while, particularly if you take the butter by surprise in the freezer. A wise ninja would have waited for it to come to room temperature, but we understand if your reflexes are sluggish after the long winter. When the butter and sugar have combined to a light mixture, add the eggs one at a time, mixing briefly, and conclude by tossing in the zest.

Retrieve the flour mixture and combine gradually with the butter mixture while folding in the yogurt and juice.

Bake for 50 minutes to 1 hour, until a dagger comes out clean.

Meanwhile, combine the cream cheese, butter, juice, and sugar. Beat until smooth.

Remove cake from the oven and allow it too cool. Some persuasion may be required to convince the pan to release its grip. Creative application of a knife and a few sound thumps should suffice.

Coat the cake with the topping.

Enjoy.

* We suppose you could make this cake without chocolate, but can’t imagine why.

Little does Jeremy know...

Enter Ninja. Hour Midnight (that’s two times six, Soya). Taste buds around the world—dry, prodding their fading memories of the younger day. The ninja’s glance, disregarding the cowardice of Yellow, fraught and bored with the stains of Red, turns its attention centerward.

The ninjas taste buds—perking from their post-dessert, quasi-hibernation—delight.

Ingredients

Orange

Method

1) Extricate orange from colorful sleeve. (Perform this act just as if you were removing a still-beating heart from the less useful ribcage.)

Ah, more useful now!

2) Create more useful items, such as a spider or umbrella.

Ferocious spider, Daunting umbrella

Time

Midnight. (Because Oranges taste best at midnight.)