Best Orange Cake
A moist, tender fresh orange cake with a sweet orange cream cheese frosting. How to make the perfect orange cake!
Oh, how I love baking cakes. Since my kids were little, I always let them choose their ultimate cake flavor. They would come up with some highly creative, interesting ideas! Since my daughter loves all things fruit, she always asks for a fresh fruit cake.
She was turning 10 and requested a homemade orange cake with orange cream cheese frosting. I emailed my sister-in-law, who is an incredible cake baker, and she sent over this recipe. I have tweaked it over the years but it the perfect orange cake recipe.
This fluffy Orange Cake made with fresh orange juice and orange zest gives it that perfect amount of orange flavor. The frosting is a combination of sweet cream butter, cream cheese, powdered sugar, and orange zest. You can completely cover the cake with frosting for a traditional cake or if you love the look of a naked cake, just do a nice “crumb coat” on the outside of the cake. This makes a beautiful naked orange cake!
To make this Orange Cake extra special, I used a Blood Orange Olive Oil from the Queen Creek Olive Oil. This infuses the cake with a light fragrant blood orange flavor. You can buy straight from their website HERE.
Tips for making the Best Orange Cake:
- Start with the dry ingredients. Stir together the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. The two leavening agents – baking soda and baking powder – give the cake a nice rise.
- Adding Oil makes the orange cake extra moist. You can use extra-virgin olive oil, canola oil, vegetable oil, or coconut oil. My favorite thing to use is the Blood Orange Olive Oil from the Queen Creek Olive Oil. You can find it HERE.
- Use Orange Juice and Fresh Orange Zest to impart orange flavor into the cake. This gives it an all-natural orange flavor. A zester is an essential tool in the kitchen to ensure you only get the orange peel, instead of the bitter white rind.
- Sour Cream helps to create a perfect texture. By using sour cream or buttermilk, it creates a tender crumb.
- Bake just until a toothpick comes out clean in the center of the cake. If you want the cake to be extra moist, you may brush the layers with a simple syrup, which is a water-sugar syrup.
- Once the cakes are cool, frost with homemade orange frosting. The frosting is made by whipping butter and cream cheese for 4 minutes until light and fluffy. Add powdered sugar, orange juice, and orange zest.
MORE FAVORITE CAKE RECIPES FROM MODERN HONEY:
- LEMON Olive Oil Cake
- VANILLA Cupcakes
- YELLOW Cake with Chocolate Frosting
- Love at First Sight CHOCOLATE Cake
- Chocolate RASPBERRY Cake
- COCONUT Cake
- RED VELVET Cake
- Jeff’s Best BANANA Cake
- Southern CARAMEL Cake
- BERRY Chantilly Cream Cake
Click to find some of my favorite cake pans — 8-inch cake pan and 9-inch cake pan.
- 2 1/2 cups Flour
- 1 3/4 cups Sugar
- 1 1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda
- 1 teaspoon Baking Powder
- 3/4 teaspoon Salt
- 1 cup Oil (extra-virgin olive oil, canola, vegetable, coconut, or blood orange evoo)
- 1 cup Fresh Orange Juice
- 3 Eggs
- 1 cup Sour Cream
- 1 - 2 teaspoons Orange Zest
-
- 1 cup Butter softened
- 1 - 8- ounce pkg. Cream Cheese softened
- 4 cups Powdered Sugar
- 1 teaspoon Orange Zest
- 2 Tablespoons Fresh Orange Juice
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- In a large mixing bowl, stir flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
- In another mixing bowl, cream oil, orange juice, eggs, sour cream, and orange zest until completely mixed.
- Fold in dry ingredients, mixing only until combined.
- Pour into greased (3) 8-inch or (2) 9-inch cake pans.
- Bake for 19-21 minutes, depending on the size of pan used. To test if the cakes are done, insert a toothpick in the center of the cake. If it comes out clean, the cakes are done. Let cool for 15 minutes before removing from pans.
- To make frosting:
- In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and cream cheese for 4 minutes until light and fluffy. Scrape down sides of the bowl halfway through mixing. Stir in powdered sugar, orange zest, and orange juice.
- Once cakes are cooled, frost with orange cream cheese frosting.
Pin on Pinterest:
That girl, who was turning ten years old, just graduated a few days ago from high school. Of course, I heard from older mothers about how fast time goes but still wasn’t fully prepared. I am so excited for her to experience college life but my heart aches to think of her leaving home. The day after graduation, we took off for Kauai Hawaii to celebrate her graduation. This is just what the family needed – some good relaxing family time while filling our days with some serious adventure! You can follow along on instagram @modern_honey. Happy Baking, my friends!
This is an excellent recipe with a perfect amount of orange flavor. I just made this for my spouse’s birthday party and it was a HUGE hit. I used regular extra virgin olive oil, and I was nervous that we would be able to taste olive oil in the finished cake. Needless to say, I couldn’t taste olive oil but the cake was the extremely moist and decadent!
I am sooooo bummed. My whole cake stuck to my greased pans. I’ve never had this happen. Thoughts ???
It’s an amazing recipe. I baked this for my husband’s birthday and he absolutely loved it. All of our friends loved it too. Olive oil worked like magic for this recipe 😍
the flavor was great! unbelievably super-duper moist cake, too.
instructions didn’t include to flour the pans after greasing and i forgot on my own, so the cakes didn’t release from the pans. had to recycle into a ‘bread’ pudding that tasted quite good. looking forward to next time when i remember to grease *and flour* the pans.
thank you for the recipe!
roughly how many oranges does it take to obtain the required amount of fresh juice/zest?
I found it took 4 cara cara oranges (so medium size?) to get almost exactly what I needed.
I’m a chocolate cake kind of girl, but I think this cake may have converted me! Have made it twice now and will definitely be making it again and again 🙂
I rarely review recipes but this cake was worth it. Due to the coronavirus shelter in place, my family is limiting grocery store runs, so my Easter meal was basically a “pantry challenge”. I selected this recipe because I always make a citrus flavored dessert for Easter (usually lemon or lime) but was limited to ingredients I already had at home. I found an old bottle of orange blossom olive oil I purchased a few years ago, but tossed it because I didn’t want to risk anyone getting sick. Instead, I used extra virgin olive oil and doubled the amount of orange zest. The cake turned out AMAZING! My family absolutely loved it. The cake was extremely moist and the orange flavor was perfect. There’s only five of us, my husband, me and our three young adults, but the entire cake is already gone…minus a piece my husband hid in the freezer for himself. I will definitely make again, maybe with the orange blossom olive oil and a touch of orange liqueur. However, the cake was wonderful as made. Thanks for the recipe!
Due to the coronavirus shelter in place, my family is limiting grocery store runs, so my Easter meal was basically a “pantry challenge”. I selected this recipe because I always make a citrus flavored dessert for Easter (usually lemon or lime) but was limited to ingredients I already had at home. I found an old bottle of orange blossom olive oil I purchased a few years ago, but tossed it because I didn’t want to risk anyone getting sick. Instead, I used extra virgin olive oil, doubled the amount of orange zest and used Greek yogurt instead of butter milk or sour cream. The cake turned out AMAZINGLY! My family absolutely loved it. The cake was extremely moist and the orange flavor was perfect. There’s only five of us, my husband, me and our three young adults, but the entire cake is already gone…minus a piece my husband hid in the freezer for himself. I will definitely make again, maybe with the orange blossom olive oil and a touch of orange liqueur. However, the cake was wonderful as made. Thanks for the recipe!
Want to try this soon. Can i use buttermilk instead of sour cream.?
Are you using cake flour?
I am a big fan of your cakes!
PSA!! If you haven’t tried her coconut cake stop what you are doing and make it now!! You will be happy you did!
I recently substituted Greek yogurt for sour cream in a different recipe and it was fantastic… going to make this cake for my wife’s birthday, has anyone else used Greek yogurt instead?
Yes. I have read many articles and now use full fat Greek yogurt to substitute for sour cream when baking and also in dips etc. because sour cream is hard to find where a I live. Works fine.
I have not made this however I am looking to try out this recipe. Is the orange oil necessary? Also could I add food coloring to give it more of an orange coloring to it?
Can I substitute marscapone cheese for cream cheese?
Hey I don’t have 2 same size pans can I make the batter first and bake one at a time or the batter can’t stay unbaked for that much time
I have made this recipe 3 times now. The cake flavor is wonderful. I have been baking professionally for over 20 years. All 3 times I baked this, my batter only filled one 8” and one 6” pan. I even replaced my baking powder after the first time thinking it was the leavening that wasn’t right. I always fill my pans just past half and I usually get a hump. These cakes did not rise over the edge at all. I’m wondering how you got the batter to fill three 8” pans?
Omg this is the best cake I’ve ever had…I use the juice from oranges and I had the blood orange olive oil…I am now anxious to try the cranberry orange and your lemon cake. Thank you for sharing your recipe
The cakes smell delicious while baking, but it’s taking forever to bake them! They’ve been in the oven 35 minutes and are still not done! I have two 9 inch pans and an internal oven thermometer to make sure the temperature is just right. I followed the recipe exactly, so I’m not sure why they are taking so long. I’m going to have burnt cakes that are underbaked on the inside. I want to love this recipe, but I feel like the cooking times are way off. I bakes cakes often and have never had this happen before.
I’m in the middle of cooking this cake and the same thing is happening as Shawna reviewed! My cake was in the oven for 21 minutes and the top was starting to get to brown but the inside was literally soup!! I make a lot of cakes and is the first time this has ever happened to me. Usually the cake is the “easy part”. It comes out light and fluffy but this is just very strange. I’ve been in the kitchen for two hours squeezing oranges, zesting, creaming, etc. and it feels like it was all a waster of time at this point. The cake is still in the oven (almost 40 minutes now) and my hope is that it all comes together and tastes great! But at this moment, I’m not so sure and would love to hear from others how they didn’t come up with a soupy cake!
It was dramatically, “over the to” soupy . I’m crossing my fingers for a good outcome but wanted to let everyone know something seems off on this recipe. I especially didn’t understand why the top got so brown so quickly. My oven rack was in the center of the oven and it was set at 350 degrees. I’ve had this oven for almost twenty years so I’m very familiar with the temp and performance of this range.
Good luck to anyone else who tries this recipe but for me, it wasn’t a good experience, so far.
I used this recipe for the top tier of a 50th wedding anniversary cake. It came out beautifully. I did use an orange essential oil that gave the cake the flavor of fresh fruit. I also used cake pan strips on 6” pans to even out the cooking speed from center to edge.
I’m having the same issue with the time. It might be a typo? I have a very similar recipe in my Purity Flour cookbook, bake time is 30-35 minutes
My wife wanted an orange cake for her birthday and found this recipe for me. I had the exact same experience as Bridget Rouser above. Greased my 9″ round pans, mixed up the cake and put it in the oven. Even after 21 minutes the batter in the pans was still VERY wet and sloshy. Pulled them out and let them cool, then tried to take them out of the pans. They were stuck fast and fell all to pieces. Tasted great, but hard to apply frosting to! A cup of oil seems like a lot, especially with a cup of orange juice, three eggs and a cup of sour cream. That just seems like a lot of liquid for the dry ingredients to absorb. Disappointed.
Best cake I’ve ever tasted! I’ve made this 4 times and it’s astoundingly good. Everyone who’s tasted it has said it’s the best cake they’ve ever had too! I’m wondering if I can swap out the orange and try grapefruit. Would the 1 cup of grapefruit juice make the cake tart or do you think it would work fine?
I baked this cake yesterday and it was the best orange cake i have ever made. It was 5 adults and a child and was gone in a day. Don’t be afraid of the amount of olive oil it will be fine. I made it in a round 9” pan and a rectangular 8” pan. Were not filled to the top. The rectangular pan was done in 35 min and the round 9” in 45min. They were moist and full of orange flavor. I will definitely make it again very soon!! 🙂
I’ve just cooked it myself and found that 2 x 9inch pans are too big. Total height of each has ended up being 2 cm at best. It took a total of 30 mins to cook.
I’ll still try cutting layers into each but will wait until they’re very cool to do so. They smell great, just a lot flatter than I’d hoped. Agree that the mixture is very very wet. Next time I’ll try more flour etc.
I was looking for an orange cake recipe and found this one. I thought it was to much oil, sour cream and juice for only 2 1/2 cups of flour, but followed the instrutions. The cake was like an oil sponge. Try it with 1/2 cup of oil and still was too oily and doesn’t smell good.
Wondering if I can use a bundt pan for this recipe?? Also how long would I need to bake the cake if using a bundt pan? Thanks
Hello,
Please can I get the metric measurements for this recipe. I tried it out and it was a disaster , I guess the measurement of my cup is different from what you used.
Haven’t actually tasted the cake yet, I am about to make the frosting but for everyone saying their cake stuck to the pan- use Bakers Joy! It is in the section with Pam spray but is a little different (in a blue and white aerosol can) and it works amazing for cakes!! I think it has flour in it so no need to flour your pans. The batter filled 2 9” pans about half way and took about 31 minutes to bake through. They still look perfect and didn’t rise to a big dome in the middle which is good considering it’s a layer cake.
I made this for my own birthday (wife not a baker) . Awesome. moist. tasty. excellent
This cake is amazing! I had enough batter to fill three 9″ cake tins (520 grams each). They took 23 minutes to bake. Based on the comments, I used about 1-2 tbsp less oil and it came out moist and delicious. Cream cheese isn’t for me so I used swiss meringue buttercream (with a citrus curd in the middle) and piped the top with roses. I’d highly recommend this recipe!
Delicious cake!
The baking time was not enough so I kept it in longer and just watched it.
Next time I’ll use flour on the pans so the cake won’t stick.
I made this recipe, but as cupcakes. Sadly they turned out very oily and crumbly. If I try it again, I’ll cut the oil in half. (Just a heads-up if anyone wanted to try it for cupcakes. )
This cake is moist and delicious! I made it a few days ago. It was a huge hit. I made two 8 inch layers and they took 30 minutes to bake. (Not the 19 to 21 minutes mentioned in the recipe.). I sprayed my pans with baking Pam (which has flour in it). It came out perfectly. Definitely a keeper!
Cake has great flavor but it calls for way too much oil and sour cream. Cake would not raise properly. On 2nd try with just a 1/2 cup of blood orange olive oil, a single serving size of nonfat plain Greek yogurt instead of the sour cream and it raised beautifully.
Also you do not need near the amount of butter in the cream cheese frosting and it is still as good.
This cake is delicious! Came out perfectly (a little longer bake time for me – approximately 30 minutes). I am so pleased! I did use a teeny bit less than a cup of the blood orange oil. Everyone thinks its delicious. So happy to have found this recipe!
the cake is delicious! I didnt have cream cheese so I used mascarpone with powder sugar, heavy whipping cream, a pinch of sale, a dash of vanilla extract and orange zest. AMAZING! I did take a star off because the cake is extremely oily and it wouldnt hold its shape. Even fridge chilled, it wanted to break into pieces. Next time I might reduce the amount of oil and sour cream to create a bit more structure. This cake wouldnt work for cupcakes I dont think.