Cast Iron Orange Cake Recipe (2024)

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?

Everyone should have at least one cast iron pan and this size is perfect. I use mine so much I just leave it on top of the stove. Buy one. You won't regret it.

I respectfully disagree with Diana - I believe the whole oranges (minus the two ends) should be pureed - other cake recipes similarly ask for the whole citrus fruit to be pureed (sometimes boiled first) to impart a lot of citrus depth to the final product. See Claudia Roden's orange cake on this site, ands others:)

Whenever a recipe calls for citrus zest and sugar, I peel the zest with a very sharp vegetable peeler, add the zest along with the sugar in the recipe into a food processor; a few pulses later you have full flavored orange or lemon sugar. For this recipe, you could then add the vanilla, fennel seeds and salt and just pulse a couple more times. Transfer sugar mixture to the bowl of a mixer, and proceed with step 4. Then make the orange puree in the orange scented food processor. Easy!

This recipe is based on one that does, in fact, use a puree of the whole orange, so I read the directions as intending to use the entire orange.

I made this this morning. I gave it a full 50-minute bake. The toothpick did not come out "clean" I pulled it as I was leary about overbaking it in the heated cast iron pan. I followed the directions exactly and did not peel the second orange - this does give the cake a real chewiness from the rind (not too bitter per other comments) - I suggest "roughly" peeling both oranges - leaving 25% of the pith/peel. Skip the nuts as the long bake time makes them soft/chewy.

I didn't have any oranges so I used fish. I didn't have any flour so I used Panko. I omitted the Chantilly cream. I skipped the food processor and fried the breaded fillets on the stovetop. Good use for a 10" cast iron pan

Reminds me a little of Giuliano Bugialli's orange sformato. For a vegan version, I like the "orange poppy lazy loaf" which uses whole oranges at the blog gretchensveganbakery dot com. She was a professional and owned a bakery in NJ and then walked away from butter, eggs and dairy, closed up shop and has created wonderful vegan recipes online. I've made the lazy orange loaf a few times, and am excited to play with adding some elements from this recipe (the semolina, walnuts and fennel).

The recipe does not say to peel oranges, so keep peel on orange for purée. Claudia Roden’s orange cake uses entire orange, peel, pith and all. She boils the oranges before using though.

Step 2 says to zest one of the oranges to add to the sugar, so that one will not have any peel on it. The other will. So I could wash both oranges well before using.Then you slice off the stem end of both oranges, cut them up into pieces (I would remove any seeds) then whiz it all up in a food processor into a kind of slurry.Tip: rub your zest/sugar hands together before rinsing for a softening & fragrant exfoliation! Your hands will thank you.

Erika, the directions clearly say to "finely zest" the SKIN of ONE orange into the bowl of sugar. Use a Microplane to do this. For the second orange, do not use the orange skin, pith or seeds, just the orange sections. The pith is usually stringy and bitter, which is is many people generally remove and do not eat it. The chef also says to "then trim a bit of the stem end off both oranges and discard" before pureeing. I have not made this cayet, my comments are based on the chef's directions.

Navel oranges don’t have seeds, I think that’s why she specifies them.

When I make the whole lemon tart on this site, if the lemon has a thick pith, I carefully zest then sloppily peel most but not all of the pith off (discard excess pith), remove the seeds. If a lemon has thin pith, I just seed it and go with the recipe. When I’ve ignored this and chucked in the whole lemons with thick pith and seeds, it is inedible. Keep in mind that the sugar in the recipe is expecting to counter some of the bitterness from the pith. I’d imagine similar rules here.

I made this with 100g instead of the 400g sugar and still found it almost too sweet in the end (that being said, I usually start my first attempt of any NYT cake recipe with about 1/3rd of the sugar).Second, the batter turned out relatively dry, so one really is spreading it in the pan, not pouring it. Had me worried for a moment, but the cake turned out absolutely fine and spongy.

this is tasty, got rave reviews. smells delicious while baking. i used 1/2t fennel, would use more next time. subbed cornmeal for semolina as was out,pecans for walnuts as thats what i had. thought the nuts kinda got lost. next time will try subbing one egg for two yolks, and i think this might be as good or better as an olive oil rather than butter cake. i will confess to not mixing as long as directed ;)

I didn't have semolina flour, but chopping the walnuts superfine gave the cake the texture it needs without the semolina. And I have this in the morning with a little plain icelandic skyr instead of the accompanying chantilly cream - delicious!.

Went down to 300g sugar without any problems with texture, rise or sweetness. Slight bitter note from the orange, but in a good way. Like a marmalade. MAKE THIS CAKE. It is EXCELLENT.

Love this cake and my family requests it often. Recommend reheating the pan once oiled to get it really sizzling hot. Also baking time is at least 50 mins before a toothpick comes out clean. Don't fret about the pith, its fabulous as written!

Made this last night. Cooked it for about 50 minutes - the outer edges and top were dark but the center was undercooked and fell apart after cooling. I also found the orange peel (which I left intact when making the puree) a bit overpowering. If I make it again I think I will reduce the temperature, bake longer, and will probably remove half of the peel / pith before making the puree.

Fantastic. I made this vegan with egg substitute, olive oil. Baked 45 mins. It was a bit moist but dried out overnight. I used half the sugar. Still was too sweet for me.

I used some organic navel oranges and followed the recipe exactly. it was delicious, especially a day or so later and even without the chantilly cream.

Loved it. Made it for brunch. No chantilly cream. My only objection was slightly too sweet for my taste. Next time we’ll try with one and a quarter cup sugar.

This recipe has way too much sugar, I went down to 1.5 cups and next time might go to 1 cup. Also, I used almonds instead of walnuts, and agree with the other writer, you could probably skip the nuts because they do get kind of soft. Strange texture, haven't decided yet whether I like the cake or not. Flavor is not complex enough for me.

This is good! I made it as written. (I originally picked the recipe because it would be easy to make dairy-free; ended up not needing to make the butter substitution.) The fennel and walnuts really elevate it. My one question: When should one take it out of the pan? I let it cool in the pan for about an hour, and while I had no trouble getting it out in one piece, it left a bunch of the lovely caramelized topping behind. I just ate that with a spoon but I'd love to have had it on the cake.

I followed Phyllis' advice and let my food processor do most of the work. I even added my butter to the sugar mixture, before pureeing the oranges in the same bowl. This cake turned out beautifully, moist with a lovely flavor and texture. But next time I'll reduce the sugar to 1 cup so I taste more orange than sugar.

I recommend pureeing enough orange for 2 cakes. So delicious, you'll want a second one soon.Would this be too rich as a layer cake with ganache filling????

Made this without peeling the second orange and it was perfect. Easy, didn’t stick, make the cream for sure.

This cake was beautiful as it comes out of my cast iron pan, but it was a little hard to remove. It is like an Italian snack cake. I didn't make the frosting, just served it plain with a touch of vanilla ice cream. Superb.