Orange Vanilla French Buttercream Cake is a recipe that can be great for any celebration. The cake is light, delicious and easy to make.
This Orange Vanilla French Buttercream Cake recipe comes from Romania. While I was attending the Pastry School in Bucharest, I met this lady, who was going to the same school as me.
We became friends very fast, as we share the same passion for cooking and baking and also, both each have a blog that we love.
One day we got together at my house and she showed me how to make two simple cakes that would save any celebration requiring a proper cake.
She gave me one recipe for a white cake and one recipe for a chocolate cake. Both of them are easy to make and can be dressed up in many ways.
I used the recipe of the white cake to make this beautiful winter holidays cake, covered in fondant and decorated with the cute snowman. I also chose to flavor the buttercream with orange, but it goes amazing with lemon as well.
As you can imagine, I had a lot of fun making the cake and also the decorations, especially this little guy.
The ingredients are enough to make a 10 inch cake. The cake is a sponge cake that is made only with eggs, sugar and flour.
There is no baking powder in this recipe, so the egg whites are beaten to a meringue consistency to incorporate air in the batter.
The buttercream is a French buttercream where eggs are cooked with sugar and flavors on a water bath(bain-marie) and butter is added at the end, little by little. It is a very silky and beautiful buttercream that I personally like a lot.
The Romanian cakes are usually moist from the syrup added to the cake before frosting. The cake is also sliced horizontally in 2-3 layers and filled with the buttercream.
When you start baking make sure that:
- All your ingredients are at room temperature.
- Also, try to do a mis-en-place, a French term used in the professional kitchens for organizing and arranging your ingredients before starting the recipe.
- Use bowls to measure all your ingredients and put them in order. If you have a scale, use it. If you need to chop chocolate or nuts for a recipe, for example, do that during this first stage.
- Separate eggs. Egg whites in a bowl, yolks in a different one.
- Make sure your tools are clean and handy. It makes so much sense to me to do that, instead of running around the kitchen for ingredients or tools that are buried in some cupboard I cannot get to.
Now, you are ready. Let’s make the cake. It is easy to make and so much better than something coming from a box.
for this Orange Vanilla French Buttercream Cake I used the following tools (Affiliate link from Amazon):
- 10″ Springform Pan – I love the springform pans, as it is much easier to work with them and you can use them not only for baking the cake, but also for building a cake that needs to be frozen before decorating.(See here a recipe for a Chocolate mousse and praline entremet)
Enjoy !
If you are interested in other cakes, feel free to go to this page where you can find a variety of them, all easy to make.
Orange Vanilla French Buttercream Cake
Orange Vanilla French Buttercream Cake is a recipe that is great for any celebration. The cake is light, delicious and easy to make.
Ingredients
Cake batter
- 7 eggs separated
- 7 tablespoons granulated sugar
- 7 tablespoons all purpose flour or cake flour
- 1/4 teaspoon of salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Orange/Lemon flavored Buttercream
- 5 large eggs
- 1/4 teaspoon of salt
- 1 2/3 cups granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- lemon zest or orange zest (from 1 fruit))
- juice from 1 lemon or 1 orange
- 4.5 sticks of unsalted butter
Syrup:
- 1/2 cup water mixed with 1/3 cup sugar bring to a boil. Cool down and brush the layers of the cake with it.
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F(180C).
- Beat egg whites with a mixer to a soft peak (When you turn your whisk upside down, the peaks are just starting to hold. They're soft and melt back into themselves after a second)
- Add the sugar and vanilla and beat until a firm peak. Stop the mixer.
- Separately, mix the egg yolks with a fork, then add them slowly to the egg whites, folding them gently.
- Mix the flour with the salt and add it also to the egg whites. Do not mix, just fold the flour slowly, being careful to not lose the air from the batter.
- Pour the batter into a 10" springform pan lined with parchment paper and bake it at 350F(180C) for about 40 minutes or until it passes the toothpick test.
- Let cool, then remove from the pan and slice horizontally in 2-3 layers.
- Orange/Lemon Buttercream
- Pour the egg in a bowl and place the bowl over a pot with water on the stove(Bain-Marie or water bath).
- Add sugar, salt, vanilla and the juice and zest from either lemon or orange(your choice of flavoring).
- Beat the mixture over the heat until it thickens. Let it cool.
- Cut the butter small and add it one at a time in your mixture, with the mixer(the method is to mix for a second to incorporate, then stop. Add another piece of butter and repeat) Do not overmix as it can separate.
- How to assemble the cake :
- Slice the cake horizontally in 2 or 3 layers. Using a pastry brush, brush each layer with the syrup.
- With a spatula, spread buttercream on the bottom layer and apply the second layer of the cake over. Continue with buttercream and another layer of cake. Cover the cake with the rest of the buttercream and decorate to your choice.
- Don't forget to add love and pacience! 🙂
Notes
What means soft picks for egg whites: When you turn your whisk upside down, the peaks are just starting to hold. They're soft and melt back into themselves after a second.
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Nutrition Information:
Yield:
20Serving Size:
1Amount Per Serving:Calories: 383Total Fat: 24gSaturated Fat: 14gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 9gCholesterol: 169mgSodium: 115mgCarbohydrates: 38gFiber: 1gSugar: 29gProtein: 5g
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