ORANGE SPICE CAKE

Orange Spice Cake image

This is one of the two cakes I made for a friend's going away party. She loves citrus stuff, and was serving Cincinnati chilli.. so I tried to combine those ideas together. The heavy cinnamon flavors that are found in Cincinnati chilli sort of combined with citrus goodness.

Provided by Maggie May Schill

Time 2h45m

Number Of Ingredients 33

Ingredients

FOR CAKE:
3 c cake flour
2 c sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp baking powder
3/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
1 c (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
4 large eggs, room temperature
1 c heavy cream
2 Tbsp pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 Tbsp orange extract
FOR ORANGE CURD:
4 large egg yolks
8 Tbsp unsalted butter, cold (divided)
1 Tbsp pure vanilla extract
1/4 can(s) fresh orange juice
1/2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 Tbsp fresh orange zest
FOR ORANGE CREAM CHEESE FROSTING:
1 c cream cheese, room temperature
1 c (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
2 tsp orange extract
3 c confectioner's sugar
orange food coloring (or a combination of yellow and red food coloring) ---opional.
FOR SIMPLE SYRUP
1 c water
1 c sugar
GARNISH:
1 c pecan chips

Steps:

1. Preheat oven to 350'F Grease two 9inch round cake pans and line bottoms with parchment paper. Set aside.
2. For Orange Curd: (Prepare before cake) 1-In a small sauce pan combine egg yolks, sugar, zest,orange juice and lemon juice. Heat over medium heat for 5-7 minutes, be sure to stir mixture almost continuously. 2- Once mixture becomes thick enough that it sticks to your spoon almost like a syrup remove from heat and stir in one tablespoon of butter at a time until all 4 tablespoons are complete dissolved. 3- Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours at least. You can store it for 2 days at the most. Side note: if you lay the plastic wrap directly against the curd while it sets you won't get that weird skin curds and pudding always get while they set typically. It'll make it easier to mix and spread on your cake later.
3. For Simple Syrup: 1- Combine water and sugar on a sauce pan and bring to a heavy boil, stir occasionally. 2- Let cool off of heat. Set aside.
4. For Cake: 1- In a mixing bow sift together cake flour, baking powder, ground nutmeg, ground cinnamon, ground ginger and ground cloves. Set aside 2- Cream butter, sugar and salt together with an electric mixer/ hand mixer. 3- Beat eggs into butter mixture one at a time, beating well after each addition. 4- Alternate adding your flour mixture and cream to the batter. There will be 3 additions of flour, and 2 additions of cream. Be sure to begin and end with flour! Do not over mix! 5- Pour batter out evenly between pans. 6- bake on the center wrack in the oven for about 30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out almost clean. 7- Cool completely on wire wrack before turning cakes out of pans.
5. For Orange Cream Cheese Frosting: 1- In a mixing bowl cream butter and cream cheese until fluffy. Gradually add confectioner's sugar until completely incorporated. 2- Add vanilla and orange extract and whip until smooth. 3- Stir in food coloring if desired. Set aside.
6. ASSEMBLY: 1- Level any doming off of completely cooled cakes. 2- Divide each cake in half creating 4 cakes. 3- Set first cake on a cake dish saturate with simple syrup and spread about 1/4 to 1/2 cup of frosting on layer evenly. 3- Stack next cake layer and saturate again with simple syrup. Spread orange curd evenly to this layer. Side note: to keep curd from dripping off sides, pipe frosting around the edges of the cake to create a protective frosting wall to trap the curd inside the cake. 4- stack next layer of cake on top and saturate again with simple syrup, spread cream cheese frosting evenly across cake. 5- Add final layer of cake and frost entire cake. Garnish with pecan chips and decorate as desired.