White and Dark Chocolate Jaffa Swirl Cake

This cake looks and taste spectacular. From the exterior, it already looks great. But when you cut into it and see the white and dark chocolate swirls, it looks even better. As I made this cake for a child’s birthday, I was hoping it would not be too overpowering with chocolate as children tend to have more subtle palettes. I didn’t need to worry. The chocolate cake part was also very light in chocolate flavour. The cake had it’s main chocolate flavour from the ganache, but was balanced very well from the orange and white chocolate flavours.

It’s a bit of work to separate the cake batch into two and add the different chocolates, but it really works both visually and flavour wise. Sometimes you will bite into one part of the cake that only contains one flavour, while other times you will get both flavours combined together. It’s definitely worth the extra effort to produce an even better cake.

The recipe says to use a food processor to make this cake, but I don’t have a powerful food processor, so did everything with an electric hand whisk and it worked just fine.



White and Dark Chocolate Jaffa Swirl Cake
From Belinda Jeffery’s Mix and Bake

Ingredients
55g good white chocolate, finely chopped
55g good dark chocolate, finely chopped
290g unsalted butter, chopped, at room temperature
2 ½ cups plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¾ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
½ teaspoon salt
4 eggs
1 ½ cups castor sugar
1 cup buttermilk
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
3 teaspoon finely grated orange zest
chocolate ganache

Method
1) Preheat oven to 180C. Butter and flour a bundt tin (approximately 26cm).
2) Melt white and dark chocolate with 20g of butter each in separate bowls, either in a microwave or over a pot of simmering water. Leave chocolates to cool while making the rest of the cake.
3) Put the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt into a food processor. Whiz together until mixed and tip into a bowl. Put eggs and sugar into the processor and whiz for 1 minute. Add remaining 250g of butter chunks and whiz until light and creamy. Pour in buttermilk and vanilla extract and whiz for 10 seconds. Add flour to wet mixture and whiz until all combined.
4) Transfer the batter into two equal lots. Add the dark chocolate to one batch and the white chocolate and orange zest to the second batch. Mix each batch until chocolate is evenly spread throughout the mixture.
5) Spread half the white chocolate mixture into the bundt tin and even it out with a spatula. Add half the dark chocolate mixture into the tin and spread evenely. Finish off with another layer of white and then dark cake mixture. Using a narrow knife blade, cut through the cake mixture and make petal or figure of eight patterns around the central hollow tube.
6) Bake for 55 minutes or until an inserted wooden skewer comes out clean. Cool on wire rack for 10 minutes before turning out the cake. Leave it to cool completely.
7) Make chocolate ganache.
8) Pour the barely warm ganache evenly over the cake so that it trickles down the side and ridges.

Chocolate Ganache
Belinda’s ganache is made from butter, water and chocolate, but I find that it’s not as good as the usual ganache I use made from cream and chocolate. So I will provide the recipe for the cream ganache.

Ingredients
100g good quality dark cooking chocolate, roughly chopped
120ml thick cream

Method
1) To make ganache, combine chocolate and cream in heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water (water should not touch bottom of bowl). Stir occasionally, till mixture is melted and smooth. Remove from heat and set aside for around an hour, stirring occasionally till it has cooled and thickened to a spreadable consistency.