- Hey, I'm John Kanell and today on "Preppy Kitchen,"
we're making a delicious, easy orange cake,
so let's get started!
First off, set that oven to 350,
grab an eight by four inch loaf pan
and butter it up, you could also use baking spray,
that totally works, too.
I'm so excited for this recipe,
because orange is one of my favorite flavors
and where I grew up in Los Angeles,
we had orange trees and lemon trees at the house,
this is a recipe my mom would make a lot.
Tablespoon of flour, just kick it around,
the rest can go right into our bowl.
Into a large bowl,
I'm adding 2 1/2 cups or 300 grams of all-purpose flour.
Measure your flour correctly.
If you're not using a scale like me,
just make sure to fluff it up and don't pack it down,
'cause a lot of times,
we use too much flour in our baked goods
and they end up being dry and bready, it's not fun.
Three quarters of a teaspoon of baking powder for leavening,
one quarter teaspoon of salt,
just for a little bit of contrast
and we're gonna sift this out.
Sifting is optional, but it sparks joy for me,
grab a whisk and whisk it up.
This recipe is such a great way to use up oranges
and have like an amazing explosion of flavor.
Orange is not used enough for desserts.
I want one cup of sugar in another bowl,
that's 200 grams.
I get a lot of questions about reducing sugar in recipes
and while you can reduce the sugar,
there's a consequence and it's not just about the sweetness.
Sugar does give you that wonderful sweet flavor,
but the other thing it does, is make things soft,
so that soft, melt-in-your-mouth texture you get from cake,
is not just from the butter and everything else,
the sugar changes the texture.
So, as you reduce that,
you're gonna get a breadier baked good,
so you can do it, but just be forewarned.
This recipe has a little bit of a twist
and some of you might know it already,
but we're not gonna add the eggs
and oil and stuff in right now,
we're gonna add the orange zest.
Orange zest has so much flavor,
a lot of the acid that's in the orange is in the skin.
So, it's flavor packed and really gives you some contrast
and a little brightened lift.
Using a rasp to just zest my orange,
all I want is the outside, I don't need that bitter pith.
A rasp is a wonderful tool to have in the kitchen,
it'll give you clouds of Parmesan on your pasta
that just like melts in your mouth.
You can use it for grating nutmeg, orange and lemon zest
and it does a lot of other stuff, too.
It's a must have tool, but if you don't have one,
I can make this happen too, I'm gonna show you what to do.
I want about two tablespoons of orange zest
and you can go a little bit heavier on it
for more orange flavor, if you want.
And when I make this recipe,
I really try and find organic oranges,
just because we're using the skin
and if they were sprayed, the spray is on the skin.
So, try and use organic, give them a good wash
to get some wax off if they've been waxed.
If you don't have a rasp, just grab a sharp knife
and you're going to carefully,
surgically remove the skin of your orange,
little strips like this
and you see it's hard to get just the skin,
but some pith is okay,
then you're gonna give it a nice, fine chop.
It's a little bit more work for sure,
but you end up getting those tiny pieces anyways.
And some people have a thing about texture,
so I will say that using a zester
is much better for having no pith.
See it removes very little, just the top.
Tap that out.
And now for the fun part, use your clean hands
and say bye to your scale, let's go.
We're going to moosh this all together.
Doing this is one of my favorite tricks
for any citrus recipe.
This expresses all of the oil out,
so it's going to break down that zest,
so you won't have any like chewy moments,
that get stuck in your teeth,
not that that would happen anyways.
It also releases all of the flavor,
the flavor is just coating all the sugar,
it's gonna dissolve in everything else
and be amazingly delicious.
So, you can see the sugar's totally changing color
right now and that's just from orange oil
that's coming out of the skin.
I'll do this for a little bit,
I really just wanna get all that orange flavor out
and have this be packed with deliciousness.
And look at that, do you see how it's sticking together?
It's almost like a wet sand texture,
that's all the orange flavor that we worked in,
so kudos to you for making that happen.
This works with lemon cupcakes and lemon cake, too,
so use this for all citrus recipes, it is great.
Right now, I have three "naked oranges",
as my mother-in-law calls them and that's true.
If you go into someone's kitchen,
you see all the oranges and lemons are stripped,
you know they mean business.
I need three quarters of a cup of orange juice, right now
and of course I don't have to tell you this,
but fresh orange juice is of course
the only thing that you can use in this cake.
I'm using a reamer because my zested oranges
are a little bit weaker, so the skin almost fall apart.
And by the way like any orange is gonna work in this recipe,
so if you have Naval Oranges,
if you have Cara Caras, like everything's great.
But, I will say, that you do wanna have like a tasty orange.
Sometimes they could be like a little bit flat and watery,
that's gonna give you like a not amazing cake.
You wanna have a lot of orange flavor in them so,
if you're making this and you're a bit nervous,
just give the juice of taste and see how orangey it is.
If you're wondering why I'm working over a piece of paper,
it's because any acid is not great for marble countertops.
Marble is basically just compacted sea shells
and any acid dissolves them.
Freshly squeezed orange juice is amazing and so delicious,
but the acid in the orange
and the orange peel that we zested,
is gonna give us a really tender, amazing dough,
it's gonna help like soften that gluten out
and just give you a melt-in-your-mouth texture.
That's one of the reasons
you add vinegar to red velvet cake,
you add sour cream to recipes,
it's not just that you get that tang,
it also helps you leaven things,
'cause it reacts with baking powder
and more often baking soda,
but it gives you this soft melt-in-your-mouth crumb.
It's helping to like just soften that gluten out
and do some amazing things.
Orange is juiced, I'm gonna grab a whisk.
Oh look, in case you forgot
my cookbook's available for pre-order!
Link's in the description box,
I'm very excited.
All right, to my sugar,
I'm adding my freshly squeezed orange juice.
One tablespoon of vanilla extract.
Orange and vanilla is an amazing combination.
I'm also adding one cup, or 240 mills of veggie oil.
If you don't wanna use veggie oil,
you could use any oil that you like that's mild.
So, like grape seed oil, avocado oil, even olive oil,
olive oil cakes are delicious.
And the nice thing about using oil in a cake,
is this can go into the fridge
and you can enjoy it right outta the fridge, cold.
If you're using butter in your cakes, it's amazing
and I love butter.
I will never hear anyone talk bad about butter,
but they do need to be warmed up a little bit,
in order to have that full melt-in-your-mouth amazingness.
And to hold things together and add some richness,
we're adding three eggs
and these guys are room temperature.
When you're making a cake,
you just don't wanna use cold ingredients,
because this is gonna take a long time to bake
in the center.
The colder your batter is,
the longer it'll take to bake in the middle
and that means the edges will be kind of burnt and dry.
We're gonna give this a whisk and get it nice and smooth.
And by the way, if you have like just a couple lemons,
but you have some other citrus fruits,
you could do any kind of combination
that's gonna be nice for you, like grapefruit, lemon.
You can add those into the orange flavor, tangerines,
they'll all work and you'll have a nice,
like a combination of flavors.
I think in the blog, I have a grapefruit champagne cake
and let me know if you want that on the, on the channel.
Okay.
This looks nice, beautiful color and it smells amazing.
Now, we're gonna combine the two.
I will not be using this whisk, that would be a bad idea,
it all just gets clumped inside.
So, instead I'm gonna pour that in,
get it all out.
So, you don't wanna overmix this batter,
that's so important.
Measuring the flour correctly
and not overmixing the batter are the two keys you need
to have a delicious cake every time.
You're just gently mixing and folding this together
until you see almost no, or no streaks of flour left.
So, I would never do this with an electric mixer,
I would use a spatula or my favorite little dough whisk.
This looks great.
Okay, this is gonna go
right into my eight by four inch loaf pan, pour that all in.
Oh, love that.
(upbeat music)
This goes into the oven, 350,
for about an hour and 10 minutes,
or until a toothpick in the center will come out clean.
If it looks like it's taking on too much color
after 40 or 50 minutes, just loosely cover it in foil
and it'll be nice and protected.
Once your cake is out of the oven,
let it cool in the pan for about 15 minutes
and then you can transfer that over
to whatever you're gonna serve it on,
set that aside to cool,
completely to like, just a little bit warm.
In the meantime, we're gonna make
the most amazing orange glaze ever, it's super easy, too.
One cup of powdered sugar,
it's like 120 grams.
I want a few tablespoons of orange juice,
it's really up to you.
It's about half an orange.
And yes, you could use blood oranges for this,
which is one of my favorite things to do in baked goods.
And you get the most beautiful shade of dusty pink, ever.
I'm adding in the zest of half of an orange right now,
so much flavor in there.
Set the scale aside and just give it a whisk.
If it's too thick, just add more orange juice.
And I will say to give it a second,
because any glaze you make
kind of looks like garbage in the beginning,
it's like, "Ah, what is this?",
but then the sugar absorbs the liquid.
So this is a bit thick, little bit more orange juice.
Just a drop more of orange juice and a minute of mixing
and you have the perfect drizzling consistency.
All those pieces of zest in here make me so happy.
Grab a spoon and just liberally drizzle
that all over the top.
I love seeing the drizzle
in the well right here at the edge, that's nice.
(upbeat music)
Out of the oven, covered in the most amazing glaze ever
and if you can see this texture, I am in heaven,
I could live in this cake.
That is so good.
The orange flavor lovely throughout,
crunchy on the outside, so soft in the middle.
I hope you get a chance to make this recipe
and if you like this video, check my "Easy Cake" playlist.