By Lisa Donovan
Updated Nov. 1, 2023
- Total Time
- 2 hours
- Prep Time
- 15 minutes
- Cook Time
- 35 minutes plus cooling
- Rating
- 4(516)
- Notes
- Read community notes
This is an elegant version of an easy Sunday cake – one that can be made early in the morning for eating a warm slice right out of the oven with coffee, and then letting it sit on the counter to enjoy it as a snack cake as the week rolls along. It magically gets better and better each day. It is adapted from Paul Bertolli’s Bitter Orange Cake recipe in his masterpiece, “Cooking by Hand,” which uses blood oranges. Here, a humble navel orange is used for its friendly sweetness. Rubbing some zest into the sugar, adding fennel and vanilla and flexing the charms of its main character ingredient (the orange), this beautifully simple cake becomes a bit deeper in its character. Playing around a bit with the flour, replacing some of the all-purpose with a toasted chestnut flour or by adding a little semolina, as this recipe calls for, makes for a delightful play on flavor, texture and crumb.
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Ingredients
Yield:1 10-inch cake
- 2cups/400 grams granulated sugar
- 2navel oranges
- 2teaspoons vanilla paste or vanilla extract
- ¼teaspoon fennel seeds, lightly toasted and coarsely ground (optional)
- ½teaspoon plus a pinch kosher salt, such as Diamond Crystal
- 1cup/226 grams salted butter, at room temperature
- 2medium or large egg yolks, at room temperature
- 2cups/255 grams all-purpose flour
- ¼cup/50 grams semolina flour (or another ¼ cup/32 grams all-purpose flour)
- 2teaspoons baking powder
- ½cup/60 grams chopped toasted walnuts
- Olive oil, for the pan
- ¾cup/180 milliliters heavy cream
- ½tablespoon confectioners’ sugar
- Pinch of kosher salt
- ¼cup/60 milliliters whole buttermilk
For the Cake
For the Buttermilk Chantilly Cream (optional)
Ingredient Substitution Guide
Preparation
Step
1
Make the cake: Place a 10-inch cast iron pan on the middle rack of the oven and heat the oven to 350 degrees while you prepare the batter.
Step
2
Add sugar to the bowl of a stand mixer and finely zest one orange into it. Set the bowl aside and then trim a bit of the stem end off both oranges and discard. Cut oranges into 8 pieces and puree in a food processor or blender, scraping the bowl as needed. You need 1½ cups puree; set aside.
Step
3
To the stand mixer bowl, add vanilla, fennel seeds (if using) and a pinch of salt. Rub ingredients together vigorously with your hands and fingers.
Step
4
When sugar is fragrant, add butter and set the mixer to medium-high speed to cream until fluffy, about 5 minutes. Scrape down bowl and paddle, making sure you aren’t leaving any butter unattended.
Step
5
Add egg yolks and beat on medium-high until well incorporated, 1 to 2 minutes more, remembering to scrape bowl and paddle as needed.
Step
6
While wet ingredients are working in the mixer, prepare dry ingredients by whisking together flour, semolina, baking powder and salt.
Step
7
Scrape butter mixture down from bowl and paddle. Give it a good stir to make sure the batter is well mixed. Return to the stand mixer, add the reserved 1½ cups orange puree and slowly incorporate on medium-low speed, then turn to medium-high to blend well.
Step
8
Starting on low speed, add dry ingredients, then increase speed to medium-high and eventually to high, scraping bowl and paddle all the livelong day, until batter is very well mixed.
Step
9
Remove the bowl from the mixer and use your spatula to scrape and stir in the nuts, making sure they’re well combined.
Step
10
Remove the hot skillet from the oven, brush with a generous amount of olive oil and spread batter in the hot pan. It should sizzle and will get a nice, toasty caramelized bottom during baking.
Step
11
Bake for 35 to 45 minutes. The cake should be set in the middle and golden brown on top. You can use a cake tester if you have one; it should come out clean. This cake can be eaten on its own warm out of the oven after sitting for a little over 30 minutes.
Step
12
If you’d like, make the cream: Using a stand mixer with the whisk attachment or a hand mixer, beat heavy cream in a large bowl, gradually adding sugar along with a pinch of salt until firm peaks form, 3 to 6 minutes. Add buttermilk and beat until billowy with soft peaks, about 1 minute. Serve immediately with slices of cooled cake, or chill in the refrigerator for up to 4 hours. If the cream separates a bit after sitting, gently beat the cream with a whisk (nothing electric here) just to recombine.
Ratings
4
out of 5
516
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Cooking Notes
Su
You absolutely don't need a stand mixer for this recipe; a wooden spoon and some careful stirring will work perfectly well. Only a very few recipes actually require a stand mixer, and I wish that NYT Cooking would do a better job of acknowledging where a stand mixer is merely a recipe writer's preference.
Amasa
You might want to search cooking.nytimes for Claudia Roden’s orange almond cake which is gluten free. She calls for 1/2 lb ground almonds. I used Bob’s Red Mill super fine almond flour (it’s 100% almonds). It worked perfectly and was delicious.
Mary W
If I. Don’t have a cast iron pan what should I use?
Powell
Everyone should have at least one cast iron pan and this size is perfect. I use mine so much I just leave it on top of the stove. Buy one. You won't regret it.
Jacqueline
I respectfully disagree with Diana - I believe the whole oranges (minus the two ends) should be pureed - other cake recipes similarly ask for the whole citrus fruit to be pureed (sometimes boiled first) to impart a lot of citrus depth to the final product. See Claudia Roden's orange cake on this site, ands others:)
Phyllis
Whenever a recipe calls for citrus zest and sugar, I peel the zest with a very sharp vegetable peeler, add the zest along with the sugar in the recipe into a food processor; a few pulses later you have full flavored orange or lemon sugar. For this recipe, you could then add the vanilla, fennel seeds and salt and just pulse a couple more times. Transfer sugar mixture to the bowl of a mixer, and proceed with step 4. Then make the orange puree in the orange scented food processor. Easy!
Susan S.
This recipe is based on one that does, in fact, use a puree of the whole orange, so I read the directions as intending to use the entire orange.
Drew L
I made this this morning. I gave it a full 50-minute bake. The toothpick did not come out "clean" I pulled it as I was leary about overbaking it in the heated cast iron pan. I followed the directions exactly and did not peel the second orange - this does give the cake a real chewiness from the rind (not too bitter per other comments) - I suggest "roughly" peeling both oranges - leaving 25% of the pith/peel. Skip the nuts as the long bake time makes them soft/chewy.
BJ
I didn't have any oranges so I used fish. I didn't have any flour so I used Panko. I omitted the Chantilly cream. I skipped the food processor and fried the breaded fillets on the stovetop. Good use for a 10" cast iron pan
Lurlene
Reminds me a little of Giuliano Bugialli's orange sformato. For a vegan version, I like the "orange poppy lazy loaf" which uses whole oranges at the blog gretchensveganbakery dot com. She was a professional and owned a bakery in NJ and then walked away from butter, eggs and dairy, closed up shop and has created wonderful vegan recipes online. I've made the lazy orange loaf a few times, and am excited to play with adding some elements from this recipe (the semolina, walnuts and fennel).
Amasa
The recipe does not say to peel oranges, so keep peel on orange for purée. Claudia Roden’s orange cake uses entire orange, peel, pith and all. She boils the oranges before using though.
HoosierGourmande
Step 2 says to zest one of the oranges to add to the sugar, so that one will not have any peel on it. The other will. So I could wash both oranges well before using.Then you slice off the stem end of both oranges, cut them up into pieces (I would remove any seeds) then whiz it all up in a food processor into a kind of slurry.Tip: rub your zest/sugar hands together before rinsing for a softening & fragrant exfoliation! Your hands will thank you.
Diana
Erika, the directions clearly say to "finely zest" the SKIN of ONE orange into the bowl of sugar. Use a Microplane to do this. For the second orange, do not use the orange skin, pith or seeds, just the orange sections. The pith is usually stringy and bitter, which is is many people generally remove and do not eat it. The chef also says to "then trim a bit of the stem end off both oranges and discard" before pureeing. I have not made this cayet, my comments are based on the chef's directions.
Adria
Navel oranges don’t have seeds, I think that’s why she specifies them.
V
When I make the whole lemon tart on this site, if the lemon has a thick pith, I carefully zest then sloppily peel most but not all of the pith off (discard excess pith), remove the seeds. If a lemon has thin pith, I just seed it and go with the recipe. When I’ve ignored this and chucked in the whole lemons with thick pith and seeds, it is inedible. Keep in mind that the sugar in the recipe is expecting to counter some of the bitterness from the pith. I’d imagine similar rules here.
Peter
I made this with 100g instead of the 400g sugar and still found it almost too sweet in the end (that being said, I usually start my first attempt of any NYT cake recipe with about 1/3rd of the sugar).Second, the batter turned out relatively dry, so one really is spreading it in the pan, not pouring it. Had me worried for a moment, but the cake turned out absolutely fine and spongy.
mb
this is tasty, got rave reviews. smells delicious while baking. i used 1/2t fennel, would use more next time. subbed cornmeal for semolina as was out,pecans for walnuts as thats what i had. thought the nuts kinda got lost. next time will try subbing one egg for two yolks, and i think this might be as good or better as an olive oil rather than butter cake. i will confess to not mixing as long as directed ;)
Colleen
I didn't have semolina flour, but chopping the walnuts superfine gave the cake the texture it needs without the semolina. And I have this in the morning with a little plain icelandic skyr instead of the accompanying chantilly cream - delicious!.
Sam
Went down to 300g sugar without any problems with texture, rise or sweetness. Slight bitter note from the orange, but in a good way. Like a marmalade. MAKE THIS CAKE. It is EXCELLENT.
Maile E.
Love this cake and my family requests it often. Recommend reheating the pan once oiled to get it really sizzling hot. Also baking time is at least 50 mins before a toothpick comes out clean. Don't fret about the pith, its fabulous as written!
Leo
Made this last night. Cooked it for about 50 minutes - the outer edges and top were dark but the center was undercooked and fell apart after cooling. I also found the orange peel (which I left intact when making the puree) a bit overpowering. If I make it again I think I will reduce the temperature, bake longer, and will probably remove half of the peel / pith before making the puree.
marie
Fantastic. I made this vegan with egg substitute, olive oil. Baked 45 mins. It was a bit moist but dried out overnight. I used half the sugar. Still was too sweet for me.
Ellen C
I used some organic navel oranges and followed the recipe exactly. it was delicious, especially a day or so later and even without the chantilly cream.
sqpt
Loved it. Made it for brunch. No chantilly cream. My only objection was slightly too sweet for my taste. Next time we’ll try with one and a quarter cup sugar.
Barbara
This recipe has way too much sugar, I went down to 1.5 cups and next time might go to 1 cup. Also, I used almonds instead of walnuts, and agree with the other writer, you could probably skip the nuts because they do get kind of soft. Strange texture, haven't decided yet whether I like the cake or not. Flavor is not complex enough for me.
Sarah N.
This is good! I made it as written. (I originally picked the recipe because it would be easy to make dairy-free; ended up not needing to make the butter substitution.) The fennel and walnuts really elevate it. My one question: When should one take it out of the pan? I let it cool in the pan for about an hour, and while I had no trouble getting it out in one piece, it left a bunch of the lovely caramelized topping behind. I just ate that with a spoon but I'd love to have had it on the cake.
Deb H
I followed Phyllis' advice and let my food processor do most of the work. I even added my butter to the sugar mixture, before pureeing the oranges in the same bowl. This cake turned out beautifully, moist with a lovely flavor and texture. But next time I'll reduce the sugar to 1 cup so I taste more orange than sugar.
Maureen
I recommend pureeing enough orange for 2 cakes. So delicious, you'll want a second one soon.Would this be too rich as a layer cake with ganache filling????
saintsavory
Made this without peeling the second orange and it was perfect. Easy, didn’t stick, make the cream for sure.
Susan Schwartz
This cake was beautiful as it comes out of my cast iron pan, but it was a little hard to remove. It is like an Italian snack cake. I didn't make the frosting, just served it plain with a touch of vanilla ice cream. Superb.
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