Cast Iron Orange Cake
Updated October 31, 2023
Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Sophia Pappas.
- Total Time
- 2 hours
- Prep Time
- 15 minutes
- Cook Time
- 35 minutes plus cooling
- Rating
- Comments
- Read comments
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Ingredients
FOR THE CAKE
2 cups/400 grams granulated sugar
2 navel oranges
2 teaspoons vanilla paste or vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon fennel seeds, lightly toasted and coarsely ground (optional)
½ teaspoon plus a pinch kosher salt, such as Diamond Crystal
1 cup/226 grams salted butter, at room temperature
2 medium or large egg yolks, at room temperature
2 cups/255 grams all-purpose flour
¼ cup/50 grams semolina flour (or another ¼ cup/32 grams all-purpose flour)
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ cup/60 grams chopped toasted walnuts
Olive oil, for the pan
FOR THE BUTTERMILK CHANTILLY CREAM (OPTIONAL)
¾ cup/180 milliliters heavy cream
½ tablespoon confectioners’ sugar
Pinch of kosher salt
¼ cup/60 milliliters whole buttermilk
Preparation
- Step 1
Make the cake: Place a 10-inch cast iron pan on the middle rack of the oven and heat the oven to 350 degrees while you prepare the batter.
- Step 2
Add sugar to the bowl of a stand mixer and finely zest one orange into it. Set the bowl aside and then trim a bit of the stem end off both oranges and discard. Cut oranges into 8 pieces and puree in a food processor or blender, scraping the bowl as needed. You need 1 ½ cups puree; set aside.
- Step 3
To the stand mixer bowl, add vanilla, fennel seeds (if using) and a pinch of salt. Rub ingredients together vigorously with your hands and fingers.
- Step 4
When sugar is fragrant, add butter and set the mixer to medium-high speed to cream until fluffy, about 5 minutes. Scrape down bowl and paddle, making sure you aren’t leaving any butter unattended.
- Step 5
Add egg yolks and beat on medium-high until well incorporated, 1 to 2 minutes more, remembering to scrape bowl and paddle as needed.
- Step 6
While wet ingredients are working in the mixer, prepare dry ingredients by whisking together flour, semolina, baking powder and salt.
- Step 7
Scrape butter mixture down from bowl and paddle. Give it a good stir to make sure the batter is well mixed. Return to the stand mixer, add the reserved 1 ½ cups orange puree and slowly incorporate on medium-low speed, then turn to medium-high to blend well.
- Step 8
Starting on low speed, add dry ingredients, then increase speed to medium-high and eventually to high, scraping bowl and paddle all the livelong day, until batter is very well mixed.
- Step 9
Remove the bowl from the mixer and use your spatula to scrape and stir in the nuts, making sure they’re well combined.
- Step 10
Remove the hot skillet from the oven, brush with a generous amount of olive oil and spread batter in the hot pan. It should sizzle and will get a nice, toasty caramelized bottom during baking.
- Step 11
Bake for 35 to 45 minutes. The cake should be set in the middle and golden brown on top. You can use a cake tester if you have one; it should come out clean. This cake can be eaten on its own warm out of the oven after sitting for a little over 30 minutes.
- Step 12
If you’d like, make the cream: Using a stand mixer with the whisk attachment or a hand mixer, beat heavy cream in a large bowl, gradually adding sugar along with a pinch of salt until firm peaks form, 3 to 6 minutes. Add buttermilk and beat until billowy with soft peaks, about 1 minute. Serve immediately with slices of cooled cake, or chill in the refrigerator for up to 4 hours. If the cream separates a bit after sitting, gently beat the cream with a whisk (nothing electric here) just to recombine.
Private Notes
Comments
You absolutely don't need a stand mixer for this recipe; a wooden spoon and some careful stirring will work perfectly well. Only a very few recipes actually require a stand mixer, and I wish that NYT Cooking would do a better job of acknowledging where a stand mixer is merely a recipe writer's preference.
You might want to search cooking.nytimes for Claudia Roden’s orange almond cake which is gluten free. She calls for 1/2 lb ground almonds. I used Bob’s Red Mill super fine almond flour (it’s 100% almonds). It worked perfectly and was delicious.
If I. Don’t have a cast iron pan what should I use?
We’ve made this several times, and have loved it. But: there is a reason, we think, for the advice to serve/enjoy warm right out of the oven. As the cake cools, the middle (the dome) will start to sink. So if made ahead for guests, it will look like a bit of a collapsed cake, even though it is thoroughly cooked throughout. We just tried baking this in a springform pan. The batter filled up the pan much higher, so we baked it much longer (60 min). It still sank, even more, in the middle over the course of 4 hrs. We’ve concluded (though we should’ve recognized this from the start) that this is a very heavy batter. Right out of the oven, there is still enough warmth to keep that middle from sinking. Our plan: go back to cast iron pan, and don’t bake hours in advance for guests. Easy enough to do the prep ahead and bake later.
I cut the sugar to one cup but otherwise followed exactly and it was fabulous! (No cast iron either, just my cake tin)
I really love this cake. And it got me thinking, it's everything I want cornbread to be. I like the idea of cornbread, taste. Hate the texture. Even when its moist its dry. And mealy. So I made this recipe but with corn. Turned out exactly what I want the texture/moisture of cornbread to be. Did take nearly an hour to bake. If I made it again, I'd cut the sugar to 1.5 cups. A bit too sweet for cornbread. Used orange zest. Probably cut that in half. Four ears, box grated, pureed, then strained.