My Baking Diary: "Light as a Feather" Orange Cake

I haven't baked (cakes) for the longest time! My last baking "session" was the CNY butter cookies, which turned out oh-so-good :D Melted in our mouths...yums!

This time around, instead of baking my usual chocolate cake (my best & turns out well all the time), I decided to go for something more 'fruity' & baked a light-as-a-feather orange cake! I came across this recipe on Nigella's website & it looks easy enough to get me interested to bake this cake. I've yet to find out if it's really light-as-a-feather since it's still cooling on the rack...but the whole house smells really delicious - the smell of "baked orange cake" fills the house! Here's the recipe that I followed! :D

Ingredients:
16 tablespoons butter - approx. 226.8g [I used really expensive butter, so I hope it's GOOD!]
2 cups sugar [I use around 1 ½ cups only]
4 medium eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
¾ teaspoon orange extract
1 tablespoon orange zest
2 cups flour
½ cup orange juice

The ingredients...

Painstakingly juiced the orange & grated the orange to get the zest!

Directions:
1. Whisk softened butter, cream butter and sugar together until fluffy.

2. Add the eggs and beat until even lighter and fluffier, without over-beating.
3. Add baking powder, soda, vanilla and orange extract and orange zest. Mix well. [I actually added all the wet ingredient first i.e. added vanilla & orange extract + orange zest into the butter mixture. Then I added the baking powder & baking soda to the flour, mixed the dry ingredients well, & added the flour mixture as Step 4 into the butter mixture.]

4. Add flour and mix until uniform.
5. Add orange juice and mix until smooth and well blended.

6. Pour into 2, 8" cake pans, buttered, floured, and lined with parchment paper. [As I wasn't very familiar with buttering/flouring & lining the parchment paper, I followed a Youtube video, which was really helpful! You can check it out here!]

7. Bake at 350 to 360 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes, or until golden and the cake is pulling away from the edges of the pan. [I baked it for more than 30 minutes, I think....almost 45 minutes! I think it varies from oven to oven?] Allow to cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack.
8. Serve with a dusting of powdered sugar, or with a butter-cream frosting of your choice.

My "light as a feather" orange cake!

The cake is golden brown & is pulled away from the edges of the pan! Woohoo!!

Try it out if you're keen on having some fluffy orange cake! :D *yummy!*

*****
Updated on 7th March 2013:

More like an orange-flavoured butter cake!

Either I put too much butter or something went not too right somehow...it actually tastes really good, but I still find it a bit too "oily" like a butter cake with orange rind & flavour. Hmm...not too bad, but it'll surely be very fattening!

Baking is therapeutic (most of the time),