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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.
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Orange Cake
Equipment
Ingredients
- 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, or blood orange evoo)
- 1 cup Fresh Orange Juice
- 3 Eggs
- 1 cup Sour Cream
- 1 - 2 teaspoons Orange Zest
Orange Cream Cheese Frosting:
- 1 cup Butter softened
- 1 - 8- ounce pkg. Cream Cheese softened
- 4 cups Powdered Sugar
- 1 teaspoon Orange Zest
- 2 Tablespoons Fresh Orange Juice
Instructions
- 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.
- Generously grease your non-stick cake pans with non-stick cooking spray or grease them with butter and flour. Pour batter 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.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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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!
Made this cake for a friend’s birthday; followed the recipe with a few small changes: added vanilla paste to both the batter and frosting, used the zest from all oranges juiced (3 for cake and 1 for frosting), and baked it in 2 8” round pans (they were quite thick and ended up taking almost 3x the baking time). The cake was a huge hit and tasted so fresh and decadent and was so incredibly moist. I’ll be making it again today, but using milk in place of orange juice to make a vanilla confetti cake – it was so moist that I couldn’t wait to try the recipe again!
This cake was really good – even the chocolate lovers loved it. The one thing I’d mention is that there isn’t a great deal of frosting. It will only allow for a naked cake and even then there isn’t a great deal of frosting. Make more if you like frosting!
I’m going to bake this in a Bundt pan. How long should I bake the cake for? Thanks. Love your recipes!
I made this for a friend’s birthday and everyone loved it. Definitely going to make it again!
Made this cake for my son’s birthday and it was so delicious. I was worried it would be too sweet or overpowered by orange flavor, but no, it was perfect. Will definitely be making this again! Thank you for sharing your recipe ☺️????
Thank you so much for this recipe, I LOVE IT! And it might now be my favorite cake ever (replacing Red Velvet with the traditional cooked frosting). I made cupcakes, and baked them for 18 minutes. The cupcakes were very tender and delicate but definitely baked completely. Oh, and I made my own blood orange evoo by processing the peel from 2 blood oranges with 1-1/4 cup of evoo. I let it sit for 90 minutes before straining out the peel. I will definitely be making this recipe again and again!
Ms. Karen, can you please provide me with more details on how exactly you made your own evoo? Thank you, I’d appreciate it.
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.
The site provided does not offer the blood orange olive oil. Help!
Hi Ida! You can still order their Valencia Orange Olive Oil. Also, you can use any type of olive oil or canola oil in this recipe. It doesn’t have to be the infused orange olive oil.
Ida, when I made this recipe, I made my own blood orange evoo by processing the peel from 2 blood oranges with 1-1/4 cup of evoo. I let it sit for 90 minutes before straining out the peel. I will definitely be making this recipe again and again!
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!
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 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!