After my plain vanilla cake and easy chocolate cake became a routine, I wanted to make something new this time. Aarush has been asking to bake a cake again for so many days already, not that he want to eat the cake but just that he enjoys the whole baking process. So, this time I chose the spongy orange cake :)
It is so much fun to bake a cake these days, more because the kid makes it all the more interesting. He knows where my recipe book is ( it's just an old n battered note pad, coated with flour and stained with butter, where I scribble down the recipe from the web pages.!) and fetches it for me. He makes trips along with me between the kitchen and the pantry to put together all the required ingredients - the flour, sugar, baking powder, essence etc. He reminds me that I forgot to take the eggs from the refrigerator or butter or the whisk. He watches wide eyed when I whisk together all the ingredients. He also warns me that oven is hot when I am placing the baking tray in it :D Trust me when I say that I look forward to bake just because he enjoys the whole experience of it! Last but not least, the way he licks off the bowl, too good :D
Now coming to the recipe part of it, I was looking everywhere in the food blog world and finally I came out with this version after trying a couple of them and changing them to my taste and convenience. This is very easy and quick cake, talking in terms of preparation before actual baking time.
Ingredients:
- All purpose Flour - 1 1/4 cups
- Powdered sugar - 1 cup
- Baking powder - 1 tsp
- Refined Sunflower Oil - 1/3 cup
- Freshly Squeezed Orange Juice - 1/2 cup
- Fresh Orange Zest - 1 tsp
- Eggs - 1 (large)
- Vanilla or Orange essence (I used vanilla) - 1 tsp
- Butter - to grease the bake tin
- Flour - to dust the bake tin
How to zest an orange : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_haXA3G1p0
Procedure:
1. Preheat the oven at 150 C degrees. Grease and dust the bake tin thoroughly and keep aside.
2. Mix flour, sugar, baking powder. Sieve together a couple of times so that they mix well.
3. Beat the egg in a bowl using whisk, then add orange juice, oil, essence. Then beat again for just few seconds so that they all mix well.
4. Add the flour mix in this, little by little, while folding gently with the whisk or spatula. Do NOT beat.
5. Make sure there are no lumps and pour this into the bake tin kept ready.
6. Place the bake tin in the preheated oven. Set the timer for 50 minutes. After 20 minutes is elapsed, increase the temperature to 170 degree C.
Do not open the oven door before 40 or 45 minutes to check for the readiness of cake. The cake is ready when a wooden pick or spaghetti inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. For me it took a couple of minutes more than 50 minutes.
The cake came out really spongy and flavorful with the goodness of fresh orange juice. Adding freshly grated zest gave amazingly lovely orange color to the cake! So friends, try this one and let me know how it came out :-)