SRC: Lavender and Lovage’s Fresh Orange Cake with Citrus Buttercream

For April’s Secret Recipe Club, I was paired with Karen of Lavender and Lovage. Karen is an English cook who loves to share British recipes and French inspired recipes that look AMAZING! Looking through her blog, I was so impressed with all the gorgeous things she’d make for tea time – a quintessential English practise. I definitely need to get more tea time in my life!

She has TONS of amazing looking recipes including these Little Victoria Lemon Daisy Cakes, this Victorian Spring Posy Cake, this sticky Ginger Marmalade Loaf and this beautiful looking fruit salad. She also has a ton of recipes using her mom’s lemon curd and she even has a recipe for strawberry curd! Yum!

I have to admit that I was really only looking at her sweet recipes as I was looking for something to make as a birthday cake for myself and Karen didn’t disappoint. After much debating, I ended up choosing her Fresh Orange Cake with Citrus Buttercream. It’s a variation of her Victoria Sandwich Cake – a sponge cake that can be made into any size that you want as all the ingredients used (butter/margarine, sugar, flour) are the same weight as the eggs used . The original recipe calls for 4 eggs, but I used 3 and it was pretty easy to adapt. I couldn’t quite convince myself to use the full measurements of margarine and sugar, so I reduced them a bit. I debated trying to make this egg free, but I wouldn’t have know how to adapt it given how the recipe is made.

The buttercream originally had lemon curd in it, but it isn’t quite as readily available in Canada as it is in England, so I substituted a mixture of orange zest, lemon juice and limoncello. I added strawberries in the filling and garnished with one on top.

I can’t wait to try this cake – it looks so tasty! I will be sharing it with my coworkers tomorrow morning as my birthday gift to them, so I’ll get the final verdict then!

Lavender and Lovage’s Fresh Orange Cake

3 free range eggs (215 g)
200 g of margarine
150 g of castor sugar (I used normal white sugar that I made finer in my magic bullet)
215 g of flour (I used a mixture of brown rice, sorghum (~2/3 of the weight) and tapioca and potato starch (~1/3 of the weight)
1 tsp. xathan gum
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
Zest of two oranges
Juice of one orange (probably could have used two)
1 tsp. apple cider vinegar

1. Preheat your oven to 350F and grease and line two 6″ cake pans.
2. Cream margarine and sugar together until fluffy.
3. Add orange zest. Add eggs one at a time until fully combined.
4. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flours, gum, leavening and salt. Shift flour into the fat and fold in.
5. Mix in orange juice and vinegar.
6. Divide evenly between both pans and bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
7. Let cake sit in the pan for a couple minutes before removing to cool on a cooling rack.
8. Once cool, frost with buttercream icing.

Citrus Buttercream Icing

4oz margarine
8 oz icing sugar
Zest of half an orange
Orange Juice
Lemon Juice
Limoncello

1. Cream margarine and icing sugar.
2. Add orange zest and a mixture of orange juice, lemon juice and limoncello (one tbsp at a time) beating until you reach the desired consistency.
3. Frost cake once it’s cool.

Karen, it was truly a pleasure to look through your blog with all your delicious recipes and gorgeous photos! I felt that I really learned about British Cuisine and look forward to trying more of your recipes!

Please check out the rest of Group D’s recipes below!