A few weeks ago Tom and I made dinner for some friends and took it over to their house, and I had a hard time deciding what to bring for dessert. I was flipping through The Cake Book by Tish Boyle when the headnote for her "Orange Grove Cake" caught my eye. We've been suffering through a miserable winter here in D.C., and Boyle says the fresh citrus flavor of the cake is "like a little shot of sunshine" that will perk you up in the dead of winter, "when you need a trip to Florida but can't get away."
This cake has four components: orange butter cake, orange soaking syrup, orange filling, and orange buttercream. The cake contains butter, sugar, eggs, orange zest, orange juice, milk, cake flour, baking powder, and salt. You pour the batter into two 9-inch round pans and bake. After the cakes are cool, you level them and split each cake into two layers; as usual, my Agbay cake leveler was a lifesaver here, because each of the four resulting layers was only one-half inch tall, and I don't have sufficient dexterity to cut such thin layers by hand. I tasted some of the trimmings, and the cake was delicious and had a wonderful orange flavor.
The cake filling is essentially an orange curd. You make it by cooking sugar, cornstarch, salt, orange zest, orange juice, lemon juice, water, and egg yolks, until the mixture comes to a boil and thickens. I put the curd through a sieve before I stuck in in the fridge, so that it would be chilled before assembling the cake.
The frosting is a Swiss buttercream. You heat egg whites and sugar before beating them to stiff peaks. The you slowly incorporate softened butter into the meringue, followed by vanilla, orange oil, and Grand Marnier. The buttercream was wonderfully luscious and smooth.
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This cake is exceptional and it really is a perfect winter dessert. It certainly brightened my day!
Recipe: "Orange Grove Cake" from The Cake Book by Tish Boyle.
This cake has four components: orange butter cake, orange soaking syrup, orange filling, and orange buttercream. The cake contains butter, sugar, eggs, orange zest, orange juice, milk, cake flour, baking powder, and salt. You pour the batter into two 9-inch round pans and bake. After the cakes are cool, you level them and split each cake into two layers; as usual, my Agbay cake leveler was a lifesaver here, because each of the four resulting layers was only one-half inch tall, and I don't have sufficient dexterity to cut such thin layers by hand. I tasted some of the trimmings, and the cake was delicious and had a wonderful orange flavor.
The cake filling is essentially an orange curd. You make it by cooking sugar, cornstarch, salt, orange zest, orange juice, lemon juice, water, and egg yolks, until the mixture comes to a boil and thickens. I put the curd through a sieve before I stuck in in the fridge, so that it would be chilled before assembling the cake.
The frosting is a Swiss buttercream. You heat egg whites and sugar before beating them to stiff peaks. The you slowly incorporate softened butter into the meringue, followed by vanilla, orange oil, and Grand Marnier. The buttercream was wonderfully luscious and smooth.
To assemble the cake, you take one of the cake layers, brush it with orange syrup (simple syrup with orange juice and Grand Marnier added), spread on some buttercream, spread on some filling, and then stack on the next layer and repeat, etc. There wasn't a lot of buttercream left at the end to frost the top and sides of the cake, and I didn't have enough to pipe any sort of border or garnish. As a result, the finished cake was a monolithic off white mass. It was smooth and uniform, but still looked pretty blah.
The cake looked a whole lot better after slicing. The layers were clean and even, and you could clearly see the buttercream and filling between the layers. But best of all, this cake was delicious! The cake stayed perfectly moist because of the soaking syrup, and the layering of orange flavor in each component made for a wonderfully bright and sweet punch of citrus. I particularly loved the dense and rich orange buttercream; in retrospect I realize that I actually had the perfect amount of frosting for the cake, because a little goes a long way. Even just the thin coating was positively decadent.This cake is exceptional and it really is a perfect winter dessert. It certainly brightened my day!
Recipe: "Orange Grove Cake" from The Cake Book by Tish Boyle.
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