Sunday 6 January 2013

Birthday cake - Orange Chiffon Cake

Today, my baby turned two years old.  Where does the time go?  Where was I?!  She's getting so big!


Here she is in Newfoundland at the age of 15 months.

(By the way, there'll be another baby born to us this coming June.  That's right, #5 is on it's way.  And yes, that is the end for us in this lifetime.)

Back to #4's birthday cake.  I was thinking hard about her and trying to think up a cake that would be "her".  Chocolate was too plain.  White with sprinkles has been done.  Coconut was too wispy and floaty for her.  I'm generally not all that creative when it comes to choosing flavours for things to bake but for some reason orange jumped out at me.  We also just happened to have some oranges in the house that are awesome and she's super awesome so the fit was a natural.  Besides, I think her favourite colour might really be "owange" as she says it now and not the colour blue that her sister has assigned to her because that was the only colour that was left after all the other family members that could speak had chosen theirs about a year ago.

#4 blowing out her candles, Thing 1 watching over her.
I was imagining an orange loaf or a pound cake of sorts and perused the usual suspects of cookbooks in my pantry and Betty Crocker's Two-Egg Yellow Chiffon Cake really stood out.  After indulging over the holidaze, I can hardly bring myself to make another sweet cake right now this one fit the bill.  It is by no means "light" as in less fat than any other cake but it does have a light feel to it - much like a cross between a regular butter cake and an angel food cake (here's a lovely blurb about how the chiffon cake came to be and rose to fame).  You do prepare a cake batter and then fold in an egg white meringue. 

The filling and frosting for this cake is a package of vanilla pudding mix prepared with orange juice and water then folded with whipped cream.  Delicious and what a good trick!

Here I have typed out the recipe as I prepared it using the recipe for the filling as filling and icing on top (I did not use another cup of whipping cream as suggested in the cookbook to frost the top and sides of the cake; I bet that would be great but just seemed a bit OTT (over-the-top) for tonight).  I also do not "do" layer cakes very well, I find the layers slide around on me a lot and usually aren't very pretty so I passed on the suggestion to cut my two cakes in two thereby creating four layers and simply filled and stacked my two cakes (if you have any suggestions to pass along, please feel free, I am open to all you comments).  It was certainly just as good, just not as impressive if I was bringing it to bridge night or something else fancy that women get together and bring stuff to and then judge each other based on it's appearance.  I don't buy into that jazz.

This fancy cake was served after a feast of "pee-dda" which she chose from pizza or spaghetti.

The Orange Cake was one of the options in the yellow chiffon recipe, I have typed it out here as the recipe as I have prepared it.

Two-Egg Orange Chiffon Cake
from Betty Crocker
2 eggs, separated
1 1/2 cups sugar, separated
2 1/4 cups flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup oil
1 orange, zested and juiced (measure juice of one orange, add water to equal 1 cup liquid)

- heat oven to 350F.  Grease and flour 2 round cake pans or one bundt pan. 
- zest one orange and juice it.  Set aside.
- in small mixer bowl, beat egg whites until foamy.  Add 1/2 cup sugar 1 Tbsp at a time and beat until stiff and glossy.  Set aside.
- measure 1 cup sugar, flour, baking powder and salt into a lage mixer bowl.  Add oil, juice/water and zest, beat 1 minute on high speed, scrape bowl.  Add egg yolks, beat 1 minute. 
- fold in meringue.  Pour into pans.
- bake 30-35 minutes until tester comes out clean in the centre.  Cool completely.

Orange Filling
1 pkg (4 servings) instant vanilla pudding mix
1 orange, zested and juiced (measure juice of one orange, add water to equal 1 cup liquid)
1/2 cup whipping cream
- mix dry pudding mix with juice of 1 orange plus water to equal 1 cup.
- in another bowl, whip cream
- fold together
- place one cake on serving platter, spreat about half the filling on cake, stack second cake on top and spread remaining filling on top allowing it to gently cascade over the side.
- let set about an hour in the fridge (or outdoors in the +4C weather we have here right now) and serve to many.  Best with tea, coffee will do.  Hahahahaah TEA!  ME?!  COFFEE!

Recovering well from the holidays?

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