Spiced Pumpkin and Bittersweet Chocolate Chip Cake

We marked our Thanksgiving with a return to an orenji favorite.  Always one of our most popular items, the Spiced Pumpkin and Bittersweet Chocolate Cake was our most frequently ordered item for Thanksgiving.  This year, not only did we sell whole cakes, but also individual  and miniature sizes!

To make this delectable cake, we begin with oven-roasted sugar pumpkin, which we puree and spice with fresh cinnamon, ground nutmeg, and grated cloves. This fresh pumpkin puree is incorporated into a dense pound cake batter and studded with the finest Belgian bittersweet chocolate chips. Baked in a fluted tin, the cake is eye-catching as soon as it comes out of the oven!

For color and textural contrast, we drizzle our pumpkin cake with bittersweet chocolate and a vanilla-infused confectioner’s icing. With hand molded chocolate acorns and leaves, these cakes are ready for your holiday meal!

While we have always envisioned this as a conclusion to dinner, we are told that it is also perfect for breakfast, afternoon tea, and an any-time snack! Moist and dense, this cake will keep in the refrigerator for weeks… but we don’t think it will last that long once you try it!

Individual Pumpkin and Bittersweet Chocolate Cakes (right and top) and Miniature "snack-sized" versions (front, left):



Like what you see? The orenji 2011 Winter Holiday Pricing Guide is coming soon!
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Miniature Holiday Desserts (part 3)

Looking forward to the 2010 Winter Holidays, we created some new and exciting items for our Winter Holiday Pricing Guide (available by clicking here). Of course, we have also been busy providing sweets for holiday events!


We continue our look back at the miniature dessert party we assisted with this year with a look at cakes and tarts.

We start with one of our “signature” desserts— Our French Chocolate Macadamia Nut Praline Tart. We have been making this tart (in both full size and miniature) for over 20 years. It remains one of our most requested and most popular items! Our signature orenji tart crust is filled with a creamy, buttery macadamia nut praline. This silky caramel is topped with a dense bittersweet chocolate mousse, and topped with a lightly sweetened whipped cream. In this case, a sprinkling of freshly toasted coconut added both textural and visual contrast. These flew off the dessert buffet, with guests asking for more!

We also created two “new” cakes this year, for the holiday dessert party. One was our Caramelized Pear Cake with Salted Caramel Icing—a recipe we developed for Thanksgiving 2010. These little brown sugar cakes were full of dense, sweet fruit, and topped with smooth, sweet, and somewhat salty caramel icing. Sprinkled with our ground Espresso and Cashew Brittle for a bitter contrast, our little cakes garnered rave reviews!

The last of the seven desserts created for this party was a dense chocolate gingerbread, made all the deeper in flavor with the addition of freshly brewed espresso, olive oil, and bitter chocolate and cocoa. Perfectly spiced with fresh and crystallized ginger, this deep cake was lifted with a smooth and creamy cream cheese frosting—scented with the fresh flavors of orange and vanilla!

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