Orange Sponge Cake recipe

This easy orange sponge cake is lovely and light as well as being deliciously zesty. Try decorating this cake with some segments of oranges and a light orange glaze for a lovely, simple celebration cake. You could also quite easily make this a lemon sponge cake by using equal quantities of lemon zest and juice in place of the orange zest and juice.

Ingredients:

200g caster sugar
200g plain flour
3 eggs, separated
6 tbsp. orange juice
1 tbsp. orange zest
2 tsp. baking powder

Method of Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 170C and grease and line a 23cm cake tin.
Beat together the egg yolks with the sugar and orange zest until fluffy. Sieve the baking powder and flour together into a separate bowl.
Add the flour mixture and the orange juice into the egg yolk mixture, alternating between flour and orange juice, beating well after each addition.
Continue until all of the flour and all of the orange juice has been used.
In a separate clean bowl, whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks form.
Put a tbsp. of the egg whites into the cake batter and mix well, then carefully fold the rest of the egg whites into the cake batter mixture.
Pour the cake batter into the cake tin and bake it in the oven for around 50 minutes.
Allow the cake to cool completely before icing it or decorating it. If you’re not decorating it, feel free to eat it warm from the oven.

Folding the egg whites into the cake batter makes for a wonderfully light cake – think of it as like making a mousse. You could leave this step out and just beat in the eggs whole, but it does make for a tasty cake.

Author: Laura Young

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Data:

Published: June 22, 2011