As a way to make good on my promise to include more Ina Garten recipes this year, I made a Bundt cake with a classy flavor combination. At least I think it’s a classy one–for me it invokes upper crust and “adult flavors.” What is this flavor you ask? Chocolate and orange. Like all of Ina’s recipes, this cake was very easy to bake and tasted so yummy. I also got to use the new photography backgrounds I purchased a few weeks ago. I think the photos came out great.

Looking back over my blog posts, I couldn’t believe how long it had been since my last Ina recipe. With timing a free Friday off from work, errands, and plans, I decided to tap into a tradition that was started way back in the early days of this blog–cooking dinner on Friday nights. Of course, if you know me, no dinner is complete without a dessert. That’s why this cake was made.

I found this recipe in Barefoot Contessa Parties! so it is an OG Ina recipe. Another reason why I liked it so much was I had almost all of the ingredients. I just needed to buy the chocolate. I also love a good Bundt cake. They always look so amazing and complicated upon unmolding.

This cake was simple to make, like most of Ina’s recipe. Though it did require zesting and juicing a few oranges. I think I need a quarter cup…yes a quarter cup!–of orange zest. Honestly, after the fifth orange, I threw in the towel and used what I had. I think it ended up being a scant quarter cup.

Since this batter is designed to fill a 10-cup Bundt pan, it makes A LOT of batter. I never really realized how much batter is needed to fill one of those pans. It’s a lot!

Here are some photos.

Like all Bundt cakes, this thing took a long time to bake. Over 40 minutes! I knew it was done when the scent of orange and chocolate began to permeate the air.

I will admit, I didn’t let it cool long enough before trying to unmold it. And because of that, some of the cake stuck to the pan. But once it was smothered in its chocolate glaze, you could barely tell.

The Baked Cake

I love that you can see all of the little chocolate chunks peeking through the cake. It makes it look like a delicious speckled cake!

Finally, it was time to put the glaze on it. This was nothing more than melting some chocolate with some cream to make a ganache. Ina recommended you pour the mixture over immediately, but I allowed it to cool slightly so it wouldn’t spread as much. In hindsight, I should have left the chocolate to cool longer, because it still provided too much spread. The end result, though, was pretty nice.

The Finished Cake

Once the chocolate was hardened, it was time to slice into and try a piece.

This recipe produced a flavorful and light cake. The orange zest (and juice) really allowed the orange flavor to sing no matter where your slice was taken from. The chocolate chunks take this recipe to a new level in taste, however, I think in the future, I would use milk chocolate inside the cake. I found the semi-sweet to be a tad too bitter for me. Though the boyfriend says that’s because I like my sweets too much. The semi-sweet ganache was fine for me.

Later in the week, I’ll be posting about the dinner I made that was served before this cake was tasted by everyone else. The piece in the photo above was my “test piece.” I had to make sure it tasted good enough to be served, right??