Chocolate Orange Cake

Following the 2 successful attempts at Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies, I've decided to try a cake!

I searched and searched until I found something that seemed simple enough for me to make and that I would actually want to eat. I found a perfect match for me--Chocolate Orange Cake! 

The recipe I found was very simple to follow and didn't have any foreign ingredients.  

Duration: 1.5 hours

Level: (for me?) Intermediate

1. I mixed 4 eggs, 1 cup of orange juice (pulp free), 1 cup of oil, and 2 cups of sugar. (The recipe didn't specify brown or white, so I just used brown sugar.) Then combined that with 3 cups of flour, 2 tsp of baking powder, and a tiny bit of salt. 

2. I divided the batter into 2, and poured melted dark chocolate into one. 

It started looking very pretty from here!

3. Then I poured the batter mixed with chocolate into the baking pan, and added the batter without chocolate on top. 

4. Then mixed the two batters a little bit to create a cool swirl. Well, it didn't turn out as cool as I wanted it to, but considering that it's my first cake, I was happy with it.

5. Baked at a 350F degree oven for 40 minutes, and voila!

My first cake, my first Chocolate Orange Cake is done!

Now, I did create something that looks like a cake, so I gave myself kudos on that. But when I took a bite, it tasted like it was missing something... There was some chocolate and some orange, but I could've used more chocolate and orange. And I was hoping for a cooler swirl effect! 

I can criticize my product forever if I can go on, but I won't. I will give myself two thumbs up for successfully baking a cake--it looks like one and it holds like one! 

I was hoping to bring this into work tomorrow to share with my co-workers. I might have to reconsider... OR maybe I should bring it in so those more experienced bakers can tell me how to improve my cake! We shall see.

Feedback on my pumpkin choco cookies...

I asked one question to people who tried my cookies: Are my cookies OK enough to justify spending more  of my time on baking OR should I spend that time on something else?

People liked my cookies and they told me to bake more.  So my first baking project was a success!

I'm going to scope out more options, more taste of fall! (and probably sticking with recipes marked "easy"...)

YUM!

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Yes, it's my first baking project!   It's maybe my 2nd or 3rd baking project altogether, but those times, I had some help.  This time, I followed the recipe, mixed ingredients, and baked all by myself!  And this certainly is my first baking project at my apartment since I moved in.

I've been having a ton of work at work and starting to get a little stressed out.  At lunch time, to ease the stress, I was eating and talking about food with some of my co-workers.  We were talking about how much we love to eat and cooking.  This string of food conversation led to talking about fall food choices, and of course, pumpkin and chocolate were brought up.  One of my co-workers mentioned having a recipe for Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies.  Since I heard that, I could only think about those cookies that had two of my favorite fall food--pumpkin and chocolate.  I was supposed to get the recipe from her, but I was getting impatient and decided to look up a recipe online.  I found one from the Food Network--definitely not new to this website--and decided that tonight was the night!

I got some baking supplies and ingredients on my way home from work.  Until today, I didn't have butter or sugar in my apartment.  How did I survive the past 2 months without those?  Well, I'm not a huge fan of those ingredients to put in my food to begin with and I am very proud of myself for staying out of those evil goodies.  But I HAD to get butter and sugar for my baking project--can't replace them with something "healthy"!

Concerns before the project:
1. I don't have an electric mixer--an obvious sign of a novice baker.  So I was nervous that I would over-use my arm with this project, but it turned out that my arms got some good exercise.

2. I decided to leave out a few ingredients, like ginger, nutmeg and cloves.  I didn't know what they taste like (with the exception of ginger) or how they would contribute to my cookies.  So I know it was a risk to take, but I just left them out.

3. I love dark chocolate, way more than milk chocolate.  I was going to use dark chocolate for my cookies even though the recipe specifically said "milk chocolate" and "not semi-sweet".  So to confirm that this trade was a good one, I had people research online.  There were several comments about how they didn't like the cookies because the dark chocolate was overpowering. So I decided to follow the recipe and use milk chocolate.

Duration: 32 minutes
Level (according to the author of the recipe): Easy

So here is my journey through my first baking project:

1. Beat and mixed 2 sticks of butter, 2 large eggs, 1 tsp of vanilla extract,

1 cup of white sugar and 1 cup of brown sugar.

2.  Mixed 3 cups of flour, 2 tsp of baking soda and 1 tsp of cinnamon

into

the liquid mixture I made in step 1.

3. Mixed in 12 oz bag of milk chocolate chip. 

4.  Put small amounts of "dough" on the parchment paper (on the cookie tray),

waited, waited, waited...

5. About 20 minutes in a 350 degree oven, my cookies were done!

Actual Time: 2 hours

Actual Level: Pretty Easy

Number of cookies: 54 (minus 1.5 cookies to taste)

Now that the first baking project has been successfully completed, I feel pretty confident about baking. And now that I have those baking necessities (i.e. baking soda, flour, measuring cups/spoons, sugar, and butter) handy, I probably will be baking more!  (well, only after I finish all of my 52.5 cookies that are sitting in my kitchen...)