Orange Chiffon Cake
A light, moist chiffon cake bursting with fresh orange juice and zest, finished with a simple orange glaze — a culinary school favorite.
- Prep Time
- 25 min
- Cook Time
- 1 hr
- Total Time
- 1 hr 25 min
- Servings
- 12 servings
For our final class in culinary school — Advanced Baking and Pastry — this was one of the cakes we got to make, and my favorite subject to finish on. The funniest part was that my partner and I both forgot to add the baking powder and salt, each of us assuming the other had done it. The cake survived anyway, and we still laugh about it.
I had to make it again at home, this time with the glaze, and it turned out even better. It's similar to angel food cake but a touch more moist, with the orange flavor coming through loud and clear from both the juice and the zest.
Ingredients
For the Cake
- 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 1/2 cups sugar, divided
- 1 tbsp. baking powder
- 1 tsp. salt
- 4 oz. vegetable oil
- 6 egg yolks
- 2 oz. cool water
- 4 oz. orange juice
- 1 tbsp. grated orange zest
- 1 tbsp. vanilla extract
- 8 egg whites
For the Orange Glaze
- 3/4 cup powdered sugar
- 2 tsp. orange zest, grated
- 2 tbsp. orange juice
Instructions
- 1Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Sift together the flour, 1 1/4 cups of the sugar, baking powder, and salt into a mixing bowl.
- 2In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, oil, water, orange juice, orange zest, and vanilla.
- 3Add the liquid mixture to the dry ingredients and whisk until combined.
- 4In a clean bowl, beat the egg whites with an electric mixer until foamy. Slowly beat in the remaining 1 1/4 cups sugar, continuing until the egg whites are stiff but not dry.
- 5Stir one-third of the egg whites into the batter to lighten it, then gently fold in the remaining egg whites.
- 6Pour the batter into an ungreased 10 inch tube pan and bake for approximately 1 hour, until a toothpick comes out clean.
- 7Immediately invert the pan over the neck of a bottle and let the cake hang upside down until completely cool, then remove from the pan.
- 8Stir together the glaze ingredients and drizzle over the cooled cake.
Tips
- Swap the orange juice for lemon juice and the orange zest for lemon zest if you'd rather make a lemon chiffon cake — same method, different citrus.
Storage & Reheating
Store the finished cake in a cake carrier.
