Last week I mentioned how I had some fresh oranges to get rid of, and I received a few suggestions (including “put them in a bag and beat people with them”.  I may or may not have tried this).

My final decision, however, was the Orange Chiffon Cake, by joyofbaking.com.

The cake...she is lonely.

Emily of emilyhauck.com gave the orange chiffon cake suggestion on the original post, so since her birthday was right around the corner I figured it’d be a perfect birthday present.  Typically you don’t want to bake something for the first time when you’re making presents for people, but I figured “heeey, what could possibly go wrong?”

Actually, nothing went wrong.  It turned out really well. ^_^

Just like joyofbaking describes, this cake is a lot like an angel food cake; it has a springy and light texture.  Having never made an angel food cake, the sheer volume of the batter really surprised me.  It required folding 6 beaten egg whites into your “normal” batter.  I think next time I should use a bigger bowl…

It's even more delicious up close.

I was able to rid myself of six oranges and I’m happy to have put them to such good use.  The cake turned out very well for my first attempt and was orange-y without being overwhelming.  Everyone at the party appeared to like it a lot, and even though it didn’t have any chocolate in it, I was really impressed.

It’s definitely something I’d bake again; despite having to squeeze oranges, separate the eggs, and peel orange zest (which is actually kind of difficult if you don’t have a a grater) it a wasn’t terribly complicated recipe.  Outside of having to know the difference between “soft” and “stiff” peaks in your egg whites and having to be careful not to deflate the batter when you folded the egg whites in – and maybe separating eggs, if you’ve never done that before – there were no difficult concepts (not that any of the aforementioned concepts are terribly difficult…they just require attention).  If you have any excess oranges laying around, I definitely recommend giving this recipe a try!

Spongy and delicious

Finally, these beautimous glamour shots of the orange chiffon cake were taken by the previously mentioned Emily Hauck.  Ch-ch-ch-check her out!

Mary Gezo

Formerly of both n00bcakes and !Blog, the two magically become one on Spatialdrift; expect some lazy baking and serious nerditude. Also, I love semicolons.