Orange Cake

I have lots of recipe videos from Youtube, what I like about them is their simplicity, and I also can see the process of making the cake and how it will look like when it’s done.

So, I’ve decided to try on 2 recipes for Orange Cake from Youtube. I got kinda bored with vanilla cake so I thought I’d give a try on something ‘fruity’ =p

One recipe is from Youtuber ciccioitaliancafe, and the other one is from weddingcakesforyou. The recipe from the ciccioitaliancafe is very easy and simple, you just have to put all the ingredients in your food processor (or blender in my case). While the one from weddingcakesforyou takes a little effort since you have to mix the egg whites till fairly stiff, and you need to put in some ingredients gradually.

I made these 2 recipes in one day, since it didn’t take too much time preparing them. The first I made was the ciccioitaliancafe, I put in the orange (whole orange, with the skin, and everything but the pit), the sugar, the flour and the butter. It was kinda hard to use blender to make this cake, I still needed to use my spatula often to get them all blended well.

After all the ingredients mixed and smooth, they all went to the cake pan and into the oven. It was baked for about 20 minutes.

While waiting for that cake, I started to work on the other cake. It really was taking a lot of effort……^_^ Cutting the orange, extracting the juice, mixing the egg whites till stiff peaks, folding in the dry ingredients….pheeewwwww…….

When I finished with the second cake’s batter, the first one had already finished baking. I got the pan out, put it in the kitchen counter and put in the second cake into the oven. The second took longer to bake, about 30 minutes.

I used a loaf pan for the first cake, then I cut it in 2 and stack them to make layers. Here’s how they look like

















I tasted the cake, and…… I didn't really like it…..hahahaha. The orange flavor is too strong for me, maybe because it uses the whole orange, and it was also kinda bitter. I have thought of only using the rind of the orange but I went against my instinct and followed the recipe…..
The cake was very dense, I don’t know whether it was me who’d done something wrong or was it supposed to be a very dense cake. This cake should be made as cupcakes, but I was lazy and didn’t want the trouble of getting the batter into those small cupcake cases.
I have to admit I’m a bit disappointed on how the cake tasted because this is a really easy and simple recipe and I thought I can use it whenever I want to make a cake for snack, or probably I had too much hope on this cake…..

Now, it’s time to taste the second cake. The youtuber who owns this recipe is a wedding cake vendor, so this is her recipe for wedding cakes, I guessed it should taste quite nice also.
I halved the recipe and bake this one in a round 20cm pan, the cake came out quite nice, I baked it longer than the suggested time since the recipe said to wait till the edge of the cake started to pull off the sides of the pan, but my cake didn’t do that. And after baking it longer, it still didn’t do that…..

Look at it when it came out of the oven

















See…..it didn’t pull off the sides of the pan…

















It cracked a bit, but it looked nice when I inverted and put it on a plate


















I needed some sample of the cake, just to know how the cake tastes like without frosting or filling, so I decided to carve the cake into a heart shape so I can eat the ‘by-product’.















This one tasted better than the first one, but since it only used orange juice, there was only a little hint of orange in it, I think this recipe should add the rind of the orange in it so that the flavor will be stronger. The texture is the same as any butter cake type. It’s quite a good cake, though I can’t say it’s the best.

I decorate these cakes with mandarin oranges and powdered whipcream.





















The whipcream became stiff after only a short time of mixing, but as soon as I put it on the cake it melted. The cake was already cooled so it was kinda weird, I don’t know why it melted so fast, was it because I didn’t mix long enough? But it was already stiff, if I mixed it any longer it would be too stiff to spread on a cake.































So I crumb-coated the cake and quickly put it and the whipcream in the freezer. Apparently, after I put the whipcream in the freezer, it didn’t melt when I apply it to the second cake. So maybe it should be put in the freezer first before used?
For the filling, I used whipcream and small mandarin oranges.
















Well, this is the finished look of the two cakes.
































































































There were some whipcream left so I made cold desserts, whipcream layered with marie biscuit, splashed with coffee, covered with another layer of whipcream, gave another splash of coffee and finished with strawberry jam. YUMMY!!!