I’ve written before about my love of lemon cake – my mild obsession with Konditor & Cook’s lemon ‘chiffon’ cake, my sister’s super-successful rendering of a Fiona Cairns’ lemon crunch cake and last Easter’s surprisingly sensational mini lemon drizzle cakes (click here for the recipe) – but when my birthday came around, rather than going back to my old favourites, I decided it was time to be a little more adventurous.
It’s blood orange season so I thought I’d use them to whip up a zippy version of my go-to lemon sponge with cream cheese icing. In doing so, I managed to troubleshoot the problems I had been having in serving up a light, moist and sort-of-level sponge (sticking with the creaming method and adding some juice at the end to obtain the right batter consistency, as well as more flavour).
I wanted even more orangey flavour, so, having first tried to reduce blood orange juice to a syrup (a disaster) I decided to make a curd with blood orange. I mastered this on my second attempt.
I even made some candied orange peel for decoration, having developed a bit of a chocolate-covered orange peel habit over Christmas.
Ingredients
Blood orange sponge cakes
- 225g plain flour
- 225g unsalted butter
- 225g caster sugar
- 4 large eggs
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 4 tbsp blood orange juice
Blood orange curd
- 4 egg yolks
- 40g unsalted butter
- 2 tbsp caster sugar
- 60ml blood orange juice
- 2 tsp blood orange zest
Blood orange cream cheese icing
- 400g icing sugar
- 200g full fat cream cheese
- 50g butter
- Zest of 2 blood oranges
Candied blood orange peel
- 1 blood orange
- 200g granulated white sugar
- 40g caster sugar
Method
Blood orange sponge cakes
Heat the oven to 170C, grease two 20cm cake tins and line with a circle of grease proof paper.
Cream the butter and sugar together, ideally in a freestanding mixer, for about 3 minutes.
Grate the zest of 2 blood oranges into the creamed butter and sugar and mix until evenly distributed.
Crack the eggs into a separate bowl and lightly whisk them.
Sieve the flour and baking powder into another bowl.
With the mixer on the lowest speed, add about a quarter of the egg to the creamed butter, sugar and zest, then a spoonful of the flour mix, then another quarter of the whisked egg, followed by a spoonful of the flour mix. Keep alternating egg and flour mix until you’ve used up all the egg.
Next, add the rest of the flour mix and stop the machine as soon as it’s all incorporated.
Finally, measure out the blood orange juice and pour it in, mixing the batter one last time.
Gently tip the mixture into your prepared tins in equal amounts and pop into the oven on the same shelf.
Bake for 25 minutes, by which time they should be golden, risen and coming away from the sides of their tins.
Place the tins on cooling racks and when the cakes have cooled a little, turn them out of their tins to cool completely.
Blood orange curd
Place all the ingredients for the curd into a small saucepan and stir continually over a low heat until the mixture thickens. Pour it into a jam jar and leave to cool before storing in the fridge until you’re ready to use it.
Blood orange cream cheese icing
Melt the butter and leave to cool.
Beat together the icing sugar, cream cheese and zest.
Add the liquid butter and combine thoroughly.
Candied blood orange peel
Cut the orange into quarters, then cut the peel away from the flesh. Cut each piece of peel into 4 slices, lengthways.
Place the 200g granulated sugar in a saucepan with 300ml water and stir over a medium heat until the sugar has dissolved. Add the pieces of peel and leave to simmer for 45 mins. Drain them in a metal sieve. When they have cooled, toss them in the caster sugar before spreading them out on a lined baking sheet and placing in the oven at 110°C for an hour, to dry out.
To assemble the cake, place one of the sponge cakes on the plate or cake stand you’re using.
Put about a third of the icing into a bowl and add 3-4 tbsp of blood orange curd to it. Stir together leaving streaks of the curd visible and spread it all over the sponge cake.
Place the other cake on top and spread the remaining icing on the top. You can also ice the sides of the cake, if you like.
Decorate the top with the candied peel.