Sick on New Year's Eve and Jaffa Orange Drizzle Cake

We don't do much on New Year's Eve. No fancy dress parties, no countdowns, none of that really. For the past few years we've been staying at home pretty much treating it like every other night. We do have a bit of champagne though. There's a bottle in the fridge chilling right now. We also have some Raspberry Lambic we got for a xmas gift that will be sampled. My husband's New Year's plans are to order pizza (AGAIN) and watch some Twilight Zone or possibly horror films in the comfort of his studio. Me? I'm sick. I came down with a nasty cold a few days ago and it just got worse today. Drippy nose, sore throat, a bit of cough...it sucks. My dinner is very uneventful tonight so I won't bother to photograph it. I made a simple comforting red wine marinara and will be having that on top of brown rice pasta. woo hoo! So in advance, Happy New Year everyone. Hope your celebration tonight's full of joy. After dinner, I'll be curled up in bed watching Doctor Who dvds.

To make myself feel better I made a little cake that was inspired by a vegan "Jaffa Orange Drizzle Cake" recipe that I found on Melisser's blog (The Urban Housewife). The recipe for it is here. I didn't use the cake part of the recipe, just the orange syrup and chocolate glaze. I used my favorite vanilla cake and made it orange flavored by switching out the liquid for half water and half orange juice and also added orange zest. I used kittee's basic vanilla cake recipe which you will find here. It's a very simple recipe that doesn't call for egg replacers or things like that. Just so you know, I missed out on trying real Jaffa Cakes when I was in London several years ago. I wasn't vegan then so I probably should have tried it. Oh well, too late! Now I'll never really know.


Here's the cake out of the oven and soaked with orange syrup. It actually looks good to eat just like this!


With the chocolate shell on top. I put the whole cake in the fridge to set it faster. You can tell the middle needs to set more.


And a slice. I can't tell you how good this cake is. I'm a big fan of orange and chocolate together and that is exactly what this cake delivers. The sponge is very moist with a light orange flavor and the chocolate is smooth and dark which offers a very nice contrast.