The cake of 2009

While I desperately await for summer to arrive at my birthday every spring, I decided to bring summer to me when I turned yet another year older in 2009.

 

My mother and I had been left alone while the rest of the familia were gone away on business and leisure traveling trips around much warmer parts of the globe. I'd wanted to do something special for the occasion, so I got my closest friends together, got my mother to provide us with her home made fantastically delicious Indian food, and I baked us a cake which promised us all a bright and warm summer!

Our first cuillère à sucre of this cake and I knew my mother would want to share this very cake with the rest of the family for her own birthday celebration in the summertime.

 We fell much in love with this cake. My father couldn't get enough of the candied orange peels layered underneath the icing, and the long strands of fresh zest baked directly into the batter.

 

And then word about this cake travelled to my sister's yet-to-be-born niece (her pregnant best friend) who deserved her own cuillère à sucre of this dessert.

Which left me with the responsibility of not only providing the cake, but cutting everyone a piece of it too!

The mommy-to-be paper plates, the baby bottle candles and the little beaded pink stroller were just too adorable! And ofcourse, my perfectly manicured red nails probably didn't escape your attention, hihihi!
Presenting you all with THE CAKE of 2009!

Cake à l'orange
Adapted from The Great Big Baking Book

 Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup butter, room temperature
• 1/2 cup caster sugar
• Zest of 2 large oranges, divided
• 2 eggs, at room temperature
• 2 Tbsp milk

For the syrup

• 1/2 cup caster sugar
• 250 ml fresh orange juice
• Zest of 1 orange

1. Preheat oven to 350'F. Line and butter a 9" circular cake pan. 
2. In a large bowl, beat together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, until well combined. Add zest of one orange and blend. 
3. In a medium bowl, sift/whisk together all the dry ingredients. Stir about 1/3 of the dry mixture to the batter combine, followed by 1 tablespoon of milk. Continue until you finish with the dry ingredients. 
4. Pour batter into cake pan and bake for about -- minutes, or until a cake tester inserted comes out clean.
5. While you wait impatiently for the cake to come, combine orange juice, sugar and remaining zest into a pot and heat on low-medium heat for about 10 minutes. Whisk constantly as the zest will tend to stick to the bottom.
6. Once the cake is out, pierce multiple holes in it with a toothpick. Pour all the orange syrup over the cake and let soak/cool for about an hour. 

Buttercream icing
adapted infinitely from various sources to my liking

Ingredients:

• 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 4 cups icing sugar
• Pinch of salt
• 1 generous tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1 Tbsp cream

1. Using a beater, cream butter until smooth and fluffy. Add icing sugar and beat on low until fully combined, about 2 minutes. Add salt and continue on beating for a minute more. Beat in the vanila extract followed by the cream. 
2. Adjust sugar to your liking and to your texture preference. Beat until white, smooth, shiny and tasty. Don't forget to lick the beaters!

To assemble the whole thing, start by leveling the cake (a post dedicated to this very thing will be up eventually), and do a quick crumb coat (ditto here on the post dedication thing) and refrigerate until the crumb coat hardens, about 15 minutes. Finally you can cover your cake with the remaining icing without worrying about any crumbs falling into the final coating! You may want to refrigerate the whole thing for about an hour so the icing firms up and your cake has this cool summer breezy feel to it. You can tint some of the icing to make funky designs, add chocolate or even sprinkle in some chopped pecans! If you're anything like me, you'll do all of the above, hihihi!