I love creating birthday cake. I seriously doubt that I have any decoration skills but creating new flavours is definitely something I enjoy and am good at.
Recently it was my best friends soon-to-be-husband´s birthday and because he has a fine palate I wanted to create something special for him.
You need for the sponge cake:
- 3 eggs
- 100g sugar
- 1 tsp Orange blossom water
- 80g flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 25g corn flour
For the frosting:
- 200g butter (unsalted)
- 250g icing sugar
- ½ cup of milk
- Sweet orange extract
- 1 small orange
- Food colouring
Here it goes:
Preheat the oven at 170°C. In a bowl, whisk the eggs until they are fluffy (ca. 1 minute), then add the sugar and continue whisking for about 3 minutes until the sugar has completely dissolved in the eggs. Add a little bit of orange blossom water (you just want a hint of the taste, and don´t forget that it will infuse a little bit). Then add flour, corn flour and baking powder. Put into a baking form and into the lower third of your oven for about 25 minutes.
In a bowl, whisk the butter (that you have taken out of the fridge a while ago because you wanted it to be easy to whisk…) until it gets fluffy, then slowly start adding the icing sugar and the milk. The frosting will have a slightly mat glaze. Then add a little bit of sweet orange extract, a bit of the juice of the freshly squeezed orange and a bit of zest (don´t forget to wash the orange first!!!). I added a little bit of food colouring because I wanted the cake to be tangerine but if you can skip that part. That was just me trying to make a decorating effort… ;-)
Once the cake is out of the oven and has cooled down, cut it in two perfect circles. Put some frosting in between the two half and then proceed with… well… er… frosting the cake.
It sounds like quite a heavy cake but in fact it´s deliciously light and fluffy with a delicate hint of citrus fruit. A perfect cake for summer.
