Eggless Orange Cake

Super soft Spongy Eggless Orange Cake

Cake whether it is eggless or with eggs when has fruits in it its nutritional value increases along with the taste, I always tell parents of school going children to order for the fruit cake rather that chocolate cake always. Reason for those children who shy away from taking fruits, it is the best way to incorporate fruits in their diet. If these cakes are made in whole wheat flour or multigrain flour then it is best as refined and bleached flour loses much of the nutrients. Whole wheat fruit cakes can be packed in the tiffin or given in breakfast with a cup of milk. What a delicious lunch box and breakfast it will make. So what stops just try it once and see how your family likes it.

Preparation Time: 20-30 min.

Baking Time: 30-35 min

Servings: Makes 300 gm. cake (Approx.)

Ingredients Required For Making Eggless Orange Cake:

• 150gm.+ 6-8 tsp. All purpose flour/Wheat flour
• 6 Oranges (I prefer at least one with green peeling)
• 75 gm. Sugar
• 50 gm. butter
• 3 Tbsp. Thick Curd
• 1 Tbsp. Vinegar (I prefer Apple cider as it is not synthetic vinegar)
• 1 Tsp. baking Powder
• 1/2Tsp. Baking soda (Cooking soda)

Direction For Making Eggless Orange Cake:

• Powder the sugar (You can take castor sugar also)
• Peel the oranges and remove the seeds and outer thin film from the oranges wedges of 4 oranges. Make pieces of the wedges.
• Sprinkle 4-5 tsp. flour on the pieces of orange wedges. After some time the flour will soak some juice from orange wedge pieces do not worry. Just do not handle it unnecessarily too much.
• Take out juice of 2 oranges.(It should be 150 ml.)
• Remove threads from inside of peel of orange with green peeling and grate it or shred it. Keep 1 teaspoon coat it with flour and keep it aside for. Discard rest. ( I prefer shredding) 
• Coat the rind pieces with the flour.

Cleaned Orange wedge pieces, rind and juice

• In a bowl take curd and whisk it to smoothness.
• Add vinegar and orange juice to curd and mix.
• Mix
• 150 gm. Flour
• Baking powder
• Baking soda
• Sieve the above mixture 4-5 times to make uniform mixture.
• Melt butter in a double boiler or microwave. Do not boil it.
• In a big deep bowl take sugar and melted butter and beat till it becomes creamy and fluffy.
• Add flour mixture to butter sugar mixture and mix till homogenous mixture is obtained.
• Add 1 teaspoon orange rind pieces coated with flour and mix.

Flour, butter, sugar and rind mixture

• Add curd + vinegar + orange juice mixture and mix with light (Fold and cut method), this should be done little faster else vinegar and baking soda and baking powder will react and cake will not rise properly.
• Add orange wedge pieces and mix with a swirl for even distribution.
• Cake batter should be pourable not too thick.

Batter for Eggless Orange Cake

Pourable Consistency of Cake Batter

• Pour the batter in the pan lined with butter paper. Tap it lightly to remove the trapped air bubbles and bake in a preheated oven at 165 ^o C for 30-35 minutes.
• After 10 min. you will see the cake rising and after 20-25 min the upper layer to become golden brown.
• Check the cake for the state of baking by poking a thin wooden/ metallic skewer from center in diagonal direction.

Eggless Orange Cake and Cupcakes Baking

• If the skewer comes out clean that means the cake is baked.
• If it has some material sticking to it then bake for some more time till it comes out clean.
• Baking time may differ from one oven to other by 5-10 min.

Cup cakes Baked After 20 minutes

Eggless Orange Cake

Tips:

• Make sure the oranges are not too sour best is  nice sweet oranges.
• If orange is little sour then decrease the amount of vinegar to 1/2teaspoon. 
• Sugar amount can be increased to 90 gm. but if you prefer too sweet cake. I prefer the cake to have a balanced sweetness so that the orange taste is not camouflaged.
• The number of oranges can be changed according to the pieces you want to put in the cake.
• Orange juice should be not less than 100 ml. 150 ml. is ideal.
• The skewer should be thin (1 mm. in diameter).
• Do not over mix or beat the mixture, mixing should be done fast with fold and cut action..
• If you find the upper crust becoming brown without the cake getting baked reduce the temperature by 10 degrees and cover the cake with foil or moist cloth without removing the cake from oven and then bake.
• Add the liquid mixture in three parts and if you find the batter becoming thin stop do not add more.
• Do not fill the container more than half with the batter, if the batter is more instead of pouring it in the cake baking container add little juice or water to make it little thin and put in cup cake moulds (oiled and flour dusted) and bake with the cake, They will bake in 20 min.

Alternate Suggestions:

• 1 Tsp. orange essence, pinch of orange color can be added to the batter. I prefer not to add any artificial additive.
• Orange rind pieces can be coated with caramel this will give cake a wonderful color.
• Oil can replace butter. If you are taking oil no need to heat it. As heating of butter is to just melt it.
• Instead of mixing baking soda to the flour it can added to the vinegar + curd + orange juice mixture and this can be added to the flour + butter + sugar + rind mixture only one has to be very quick as soda will react with the vinegar and bubbles will be formed rendering soda ineffective.

Happy baking