Super moist, fall spiced, cider orange cake! This cake is made with cinnamon, a boiled cider syrup and fresh orange juice and zest for the perfect fall taste. Olive Oil lifts the cake with earthy tones and a ton of moisture. The cake is either made in a bundt and drizzled with an easy cider orange glaze or made as a layer cake and wrapped in a cranberry meringue. Every slice explodes in fall flavor!
Super moist, fall spiced, cider orange cake! This apple cider bundt cake is made with cinnamon, a boiled cider syrup and fresh orange juice and zest for the perfect fall taste. Olive Oil lifts the cake with earthy tones and a ton of moisture. Every slice explodes in fall flavor!
Apple cider bundt cakes are everywhere this time of year; for good reason! In the states apple cider donuts are the treat to have when visiting local farms for apple picking, pumpkin patching, and hayriding. Often, the donuts turn into giants as home bakers use the same flavors to bake bundt cakes with fresh cider and doused them in cinnamon sugar like the original donut. If you can’t make it out to a farm but want a really good donut this recipe is pretty wonderful (I’ve made it twice and both times it turned out wonderfully). And if you wanted a traditional apple cider bundt, this one looks incredible (uses an apple, fresh cider and brown butter!). Never a fan of convention, I wanted to do something truly unique with my own bundt cake this season, and so this was born.
Often when warm cider is made for mug drinking it’s heated it with some mulling spices; cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, etc. Most often there’s orange peel in the spice mix as well, which is a really lovely way to bring out the tart of the apple and balance the sweet. For this cake, lean hard into that cider/orange combination and the results are superbly splendid. I guarantee you have not had a cider bundt like this before!
For bundt cakes or loaves, using an oil rather than butter is preferable because these cakes are designed to last more than an afternoon or evening, so you’ll want to keep them moist as long as possible. You’ll find any cake made with butter will be drier the next day and quickly deteriorate in moisture and quality. Oils, especially when combined with fruit, do the opposite.
In the fall, fresh apple cider is sold everywhere in the US; a sweet raw, unfiltered apple juice made from literally pressing the apples. It’s very different than the clear apple juice you find year round and cannot be replaced by it. (Also, just because I’ve been asked this a few times before, it cannot be substituted with apple cider vinegar).
What we’ll do to make this is boil fresh cider on high (use a deep pot) for at least an hour until most of the water has evaporated and it becomes a thick, concentrated syrup.
If you can’t find fresh cider to make a reduction yourself, you can make it yourself (here is a recipe to do so – involves boiling apples with cinnamon and water, and orange!) Or you can find the syrup pre-boiled online like this one which might be a bit more intense in flavor but would work well.
I also made this as a two layer cake with some chopped cranberries and a cranberry meringue – and it was divine! Here’s how: Make the cake batter as instructed, and add 1/2 cup chopped cranberries to the batter at the end. Then, divide the batter between two 8″ cake pans and baked them for 35-40 minutes.
To make the cranberry meringue you’ll need: 3 large egg whites, 3/4 cup granulated sugar and 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons of cranberry juice. In a small pot, boil the sugar and juice until it hits 250 F. When it is close, begin whipping the egg whites (stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment works best, but you can use a hand mixer) until they are foamy. When the juice is done, with the mixer on medium, slowly pour the juice into the mixer bowl. Turn the mixer to medium high and whip until you have stiff peaks. Spread over the cooled cake and use a kitchen torch to toast the edges.
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This recipe was great! Seriously it was a hit! The cake was so moist and flavorful. My first olive oil cake and it did not disappoint. Perfect fall alternative dessert that I think would be great year round. I made a series of unfortunate personal errors because I’m human (bought a too small bundt pan, didn’t adequately grease it, and forgot to add the orange juice to the icing before I cut up the rest of the orange for my son) but it was still excellent and I know it will be even more excellent the next time I make it (correctly)
This looks amazing! If I wanted to make the cranberry version with meringue a day in advance, how would you suggest keeping it overnight? Would it be okay in the refrigerator? And would you wait to toast the meringue until the following day? Thanks!
Hi Valerie! I wouldn’t do the meringue until the day of serving and I’d torch it just a few hours before.
I made this last week and it was SUCH. a hit! Such a great flavor profile- definitely one of my favorite bakes as of late!
can boiled cider (premade and sold by KAF) be used instead of reducing apple cider? Could shredded apple or diced apples be added?
Possibly about the KAF cider – but I have heard that the intensity of theirs is different than home boiled so I’m not so sure. As for the apples, I haven’t tried it but I’d advise against diced, it’s a thin batter and won’t hold them in place (they’ll all sink to the bottom).