Orange Sponge Cake

 

This Orange Sponge Cake is perfect to make after you’ve made meringue cookies, meringue for a pie or an angel food cake because it uses up all the egg yolks you didn’t use in the other!

I am sorry we haven’t been together for a few weeks but here’s what happened:  two days after my last post, an old friend contacted me in an attempt to get hold of Mr. Picky Eater – she wanted to visit with him about helping her to roll out a program statewide.  She knew he had years of experience at it and could use some of his “retired” knowledge and work ethic.  To my surprise, after three years of “retirement”, he said yes.  They met the next day with a few other staff members.  The meeting ended with a start date of December 21.  At that moment, the race was on!  We had to find his suits, ties, dress shirts and even his shoes – make sure they were still “in style”, fit well and needed no repair………that was a trick!  Once that was completed, we had to change up babysitting duties.   My mom had to be pressed back into service.  If you remember she was hospitalized in August and September.  She had only worked her way back up to one day per week – but now we needed her three.  She’s starting out at two with lots of other help.

It’s been a whirlwind but MPE is very happy and feeling relevant again – in this age of “younger is better”, there are very few people who recognize experience and knowledge as important factors during the hiring process – luckily, this person did!  It’s a contract and certainly made our Christmas a whole lot brighter and a whole lot busier too!

I made my Cinnamon Sugar Pecans as presents for Top Girl’s employees – it uses lots and lots of egg whites so I had nearly a dozen egg yolks that needed to be used.  Lucky for me, I opened the newspaper and there in the lifestyle section was a cake called the 12-Yolk Cake.  A woman named Bernice from Choctaw, Oklahoma sent it in so credit goes to her.  It’s a great sponge and I bet you could change up the citrus and make any flavor cake you want.  It came out wonderfully and I encourage you to take it to your next office, church or family potluck.  You may want to add a glaze or ice it but the original recipe didn’t call for it and it’s a lovely cake without any.

Orange Sponge Cake

Ingredients:

1 2/3 Cups All-Purpose Flour

1 ½ teaspoons Baking Powder

½ teaspoon Salt

¾ Cups Egg Yolks (11 yolks) plus 1 whole large egg

1 ½ Cups White Sugar

1 Tablespoon Orange Zest

1 Tablespoon fresh Orange Juice

1 teaspoon lemon extract

¾ Cup warm water (just let the hot water run until it’s pretty warm – not hot)

 

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 325F

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt twice – then pour again into the sifter and set aside.

Put the egg yolks and the whole egg into a big mixing bowl or the bowl of the stand mixer and whip on high speed until it looks lemony yellow and shiny.  Then you start  adding the sugar, a little at a time giving each dose a chance to smooth out and not be grainy.  This could take 5 minutes or so, but it’s very important.  When it’s done, add the orange juice and zest as well as the lemon extract – it should look like this:

 

Everything else will be hand folded in just until combined –

Start with the flour mixture – sift it into the yolks bowl and fold it in till just combined.

Quickly, add in the warm water – folding again, until just combined and then pour into a well greased tube pan – I used a Bundt pan.

The directions said to cook for an hour but mine was completely done in 40 minutes so I would start doing the toothpick test at 40 and check every 5 until done.

Now this is the interesting part:  take the cake out of the oven and flip in over onto a wire rack and allow to cool hanging upside down until completely cool.

Take a spatula or something like that to loosen the sides and then pop it out.  This when you would add a glaze if you wanted.

It was a very nice and light change from all the heavy rich tasting desserts we have been having these last few weeks.  Try it – you’ll love it!