Amidst this horrible pandemic during which more and more people are falling prey to Covid- 19 day-by-day, it’s widely advised to increase your vitamin-C intake to boost your immunity as one of the only best reliable ways to fight this crisis as long as a vaccine or cure is found. Wondering why I’m saying this?
Oranges are a great source of natural Vitamin-C. However the thought of having these lovely citrus fruits can become boring when the only way you try increasing your daily vitamin-C intake is by drinking several glasses of orange juice & not many kids prefer this nowadays..Try baking a cake that has all the goodness and flavour of oranges! Your family will love it!
How I developed this recipe?
I had been following ‘Josephine’s recipes’ – which is a wonderful YouTube channel for amazon spongy delicate bakes and I’m a big fan of ‘ Basic butter sponge cake’ from it, which had become my go-to never-fail sponge cake recipe for the past 3 years.
I have also tried many Greek-style soaked orange pound cake recipes. But each time I tried one of those, the cakes where quite dense not to my liking even though the flavours were great.
This amazing recipe was born as a result of my humble effort to blend in flavours of my Greek-style orange pound cake trials with the texture of my to-go sponge cake.
What make this recipe special?
. Oranges- Apart from being a great available natural source of vitamin-C that helps in boosting immunity & renewal of cells for healthy skin, oranges have anti-inflammatory & even anti-cancerous properties.
. Less Fat & more protein recipe- Unlike many other orange cake recipes, most of which are rich butter pound cakes with lesser number of eggs and more amount of butter, this sponge cake is lite & fluffy on its own due to beautiful ways of gentle and careful incorporation of ingredients listed below -using very little butter & more number of eggs.
. Easy-to-follow recipe- I have listed and denoted the ingredients in a systematic stepwise manner to help you to easily follow this recipe without creating any confusion or mess in the kitchen making life easier!
What you’ll need– (with stepwise instructions)
A.Beat together-
Beat together B+C+D (add the flour mixture to the yolk mixture little by little.
1. 4 Egg whites
2. Half teaspoon cream of tartar powder
3. 7 tablespoons sugar
B.Boil-
4. 5 tablespoons butter
5. 3 tablespoons sugar
6. 8 tablespoons milk
C.Sieve together-
7. Half teaspoon Baking powder
8. 11 tablespoons All-purpose flour
9. 1 tablespoon cornflour
D.Mix together –
10. Zest of 2 oranges
11. 4 Egg yolks
12. 1 pinch of salt
13. Half teaspoon Vanilla extract
How to prepare-
Beat together B+C+D (add the flour mixture to the yolk mixture little by little.Whisk up the egg white mix till stiff and add the above prepared yellow mix to egg white mix little by little to gently fold in & incorporate.
Pour into a (preferably ~ 7/8 inches round) well greased baking tin & Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180 degree Celsius for 30-40 mins- until a toothpick inserted to its centre comes out clean.
For syrup-boil:
1. Juice of 4 oranges
2. 3-4 tablespoons sugar
3. 1 inch cinnamon stick (patta)
Boil all the 3 ingredients above in a sauce pan for 7-8 minutes and pour over the cake. Rest it for a few minutes for the cake to soak up this syrup.
Refrigerate the cake and serve chilled.
Notes, tips & suggestions-
. I used Valencia oranges for this recipe are they are not only firm & thus easy to squeeze up for juicing, but also are very bright orange in colour thus adding a beautiful hue to the cake from the zest, without the need of adding any artificial orange color.
. You don’t have to go rush to your grocery store during this corona time in search of cream of tartar as it’s usually a bakers ingredients and not many households would have it with them. You could just substitute it with equal amounts of white vinegar or lemon juice as it could work almost equally well.
. You can garnish this cake with crush caramel praline or crystallised caramel disks/swirls along with fresh thinly sliced orange or curly orange peels.