Orange Creamsicle Cake

January 12, 2019

Alec made us a delicious cake for New Year's day. We were having some family over a ham dinner and wanted something sweet to serve. He really had his heart set on making a cake, decorating it, and using orange flavored frosting.

Originally he wanted to try making a chocolate cake but we had so few ingredients in the house since it was a spur of the moment thing that we had to alter his plans...a few times!

We ended up coming up with a pretty tasty cake we called Orange Creamsicle.

We made his favorite vanilla cake recipe (that he found somewhere on-line and wrote down-- if this is your recipe please claim it so I can give credit where credit is due!), and whipped up some yummy frosting; flavoring part of it orange using an actual orange and some fresh squeezed juice.

Cake ingredients: Classic Yellow Cake
1 1/2 sticks butter, softened
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
2 1/2 cups flour
1 1/4 cup milk

Filling ingredients: Traditional Buttercream
1 1/2 cups confectioners sugar
1/2 cup butter; softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 Tablespoon milk

Frosting ingredients: Orange Buttercream

1 stick butter; softened

4 cups confectioners sugar

Zest of one orange

1/4 cup fresh squeezed orange juice

Orange food coloring

Make the cake! You can use a boxed mix if your prefer but Alec loves to bake from scratch. So first he combined the softened butter with the granulated sugar in a stand mixer then added in the eggs and vanilla extract. In a small bowl he combined the baking powder, salt, and flour then took turns adding 1/2 of the dry mixture and 1/2 of the milk into the mixer mixing until it was all incorporated. He greased and floured two 9" cake pans and filled them with equal parts of the cake batter. Then he baked them at 350 for 25 minutes. He let them cool for a few hours at room temperature before attempting to decorate.

For the Filling: In the stand mixer we whipped the butter and added the confectioners sugar on low speed. We mixed in the milk and vanilla until we had a nice smooth frosting.

We put a generous amount between the two layers of the cake.

For the Frosting: In the stand mixer Alec combined the butter and confectioners sugar on low and slowly added in the orange zest and juice a bit at a time until we had the desired texture and taste. He then added in a bit of orange food coloring to give it that creamsicle color.

I showed Alec how to use a long cake decorating spatula to get a nice smooth finish on the top of the cake. Then Alec filled a piping bag with the orange frosting and set to work playing around with a couple different tips to decorate the sides and edges of the cake.