This vanilla orange layer cake makes a beautiful birthday cake, with tall layers and a slight twist on classic flavours. Vegan, whole grain, and refined sugar free.
Course Dessert
Cuisine Vegan
Prep Time 15 minutesminutes
Cook Time 55 minutesminutes
Resting Time 1 hourhour
Total Time 1 hourhour10 minutesminutes
Servings 1large layer cake
Ingredients
3cupskamut flour
2cupseinkorn flour*
5teaspoonsbaking powder
2teaspoonsbaking soda
1tablespoonvanilla powder*
Pinchof salt
1 ½cupshoney or maple syrup
3cupsorange juice*
1cupgrape seed oil*
2tablespoonspure vanilla extract
Zest of 4 oranges
Icing
3cans coconut milkchilled overnight
2tablespoonshoney
Zest of 2 oranges
1teaspoonvanilla powder
Orange Topping
2orangespeeled and sliced
1teaspoonhoney
¼teaspoonground cinnamonoptional
Raspberry Filling
2cupsfrozen raspberries
1tablespoonhoney
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 350F. Grease and lightly flour two 9-inch springform pans.
Sift the flours, baking powder and soda, vanilla, and salt into a large bowl. Sifting them helps keep everything light.
In a medium bowl, whisk the honey, orange juice, oil, vanilla, and orange zest. Add this into the dry ingredients, and whisk them together until just combined. Avoid over mixing.
Pour even amounts of the batter into the prepared pans, and bake for 55-60 minutes. Resist the urge to open the oven to peek while they're baking, especially for the first 40 minutes or so. Test them with a toothpick to make sure they're done before taking them out of the oven.
Cool for about 15 minutes before removing the sides of the pans. Cool completely before icing. This takes several hours, so prepare in advance. I made the cakes the night in advance, then brushed them with a little bit of the macerating syrup from the oranges for the topping to keep them from drying out overnight. Doing that makes them extra scrummy, too.
To assemble, cut each cake in half, making four layers. Layer cake on the bottom, followed by a third of the cream, then cake, then all of the raspberry filling, then cake, then another third of the cream, then cake, and top with the remaining cream and the macerated oranges. I added some extra vanilla powder and a sprinkle of bee pollen over my cake.
Icing
Whip the creamy part from the coconut milk with the honey, orange zest, and vanilla. You can peek at the instructions in this recipe if you haven't make coconut whipped cream before.
Orange Topping
Place the oranges, honey, and cinnamon in a covered dish and let them sit for about an hour, or overnight. This is maceration, which helps to sweeten and soften the oranges.
Raspberry Filling
Gently cook the raspberries with the honey over low heat until just simmering. Remove from the heat and cool completely before adding to the cake.
Notes
1. Cut the recipe in half if you don't want a layer cake. It's makes quite a large cake this way, so plan on feeding a few people with it. 2. If you don't eat honey, substitute maple syrup. 3. You can use all kamut, einkorn, spelt, or plain white flour here instead of the combination. I love the softness of the einkorn with the slightly coarser texture of kamut, but they're both quite light. 4. If you don't have vanilla powder, just use some extra extract instead. 5. Try to find orange juice not from concentrate. Apparently that's not a thing at our neighbourhood supermarket, so we squeezed about a million oranges instead. 6. Any light tasting oil can be used instead of grape seed, but try to avoid oils that are solid at room temperature, like coconut. 7. Thanks to my brother in law for holding that giant piece of cake while I took pictures. He ate the whole piece, then polished of my sister's, too.