Lemon Orange Cake aka Sunshine Cake
A cake after a citrus lover's heart: tastes like a tart Orange Julius shake, is covered in a double vanilla buttercream. This lemon orange cake can be made as a layer cake or in a sheet pan and becomes the perfect canvas for creative freedom.
Lemon Orange Cake
This cake is mostly about the orange – lots of zest and juice bump up the flavor, and the vanilla really accentuates. I use two types of vanilla, because I find that the combination with orange results in a sweet yet complex taste. I added some lemon zest to round out all the sweetness. For the topping, you can do just vanilla buttercream and some beautiful swirls or you can mix up some colors and pipe something that speaks to your own inner child.
How to make Lemon Orange Cake
To make the cake I use a reverse creaming method: the flour is coated in butter and sugar before the eggs go in. This leads to a very tight, tender crumb which works perfectly here. Be sure to scrape down the bowl a lot, with the reverse cream method it’s easy to get bits of unmixed batter.
Sheet Pan Sunshine Cake
I can see this being the kind of cake you prep up to the point of the white background, and then handover to your little ones to have fun with and draw their own creative scene. When she’s old enough to handle a piping bag without squirting it backwards, I’m going to make her loads of sunshine cakes for her to decorate. And until her artistic abilities become more sophisticated, we know every cake will at least taste amazing =)
But also, you can make this Lemon Orange Cake as a layer cake!
Two eight inch cake pans (3″ tall) or three 6″ cake pans will work. Bake them at 325 F so they don’t dome too much and if they do, just use a bread knife to slice off the ‘hat’.
The perfect Vanilla Buttercream
I use two types of vanilla in this cake and buttercream because there is something wonderful about the combination – you get the intensity of pure and the sweetness of imitation. If you only have one, double it.
To decorate as shown, once cake is cool, make buttercream. Have six bowls ready, in three of them place 2 tablespoons buttercream, in the other three bowls place 4 tablespoons in each of buttercream. For the pink, blue and purple you’ll only need 2 tablespoons buttercream so color them in the corresponding bowls. You’ll want more for the orange, yellow and green because you’ll use them on the sun and grass. Place all the colors in piping bags. For the rainbow, I piped each color in an arc shape and then once the rainbow is done I smoothed it over with a small offset spatula. The flowers are edible chamomiles.
Recipe for Lemon Orange Cake
Lemon Orange Cake
Ingredients
Lemon Orange Cake
- 333g or 1 ⅔ cup granulated sugar
- 170g or ¾ unsalted butter
- Zest of one large orange
- Zest of 2 lemons avoid the white pith when zesting
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¾ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon imitation vanilla
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 4 large eggs at room temperature
- 320g or 2 ⅔ cup cake flour
- 180g or ¾ cup kefir or buttermilk
- 120g or ½ cup freshly squeezed orange juice
Vanilla Buttercream
- 1 ½ unsalted butter softened
- 3 cups organic powdered sugar sifted
- 1 teaspoon sea salt
- 1 teaspoon imitation vanilla
- ½ teaspoon vanilla paste or 1 teaspoon
- 1-2 tablespoons milk
Method
To make the cake:
- Preheat oven to 325. Butter and flour a 9×13” sheet pan.
- In the bowl of your stand-mixer, beat together the sugar, butter, and flour until the mixture is sandy.
- Add baking powder, soda, salt, zests and vanillas and beat to combine.
- Add eggs, one at a time. Beating for at least 30 seconds between each add.
- Add the buttermilk and orange juice and mix to just combine.
- Spread into prepared sheet pan. Bake for 35-40 minutes. If using cake pans, check at 30 minutes.
For the buttercream:
- Beat butter until light and fluffy, about 3-5 minutes.
- Add salt and vanillas, beat to combine.
- Add powdered sugar and beat to combine.
- 1Add milk, beat to combine.
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I had a lot of trouble with this recipe sadly, and I suspect that both times were due to over-mixing at the end despite trying to be very careful. I used your method the first time, and the second time I used the more butter and sugar creaming method, trying to get a lot of air into the eggs, and alternating the dry and liquid at the end. I knew over mixing would be a risk, but alas. Both cakes came out flat and somewhat dense (not inedible, just more similar to an almond flour cake, perhaps) – nothing like what you have pictured. I’m all ears if you have any suggestions to avoid that result with this cake.
Hi Kacie, sorry this didn’t work out for you. The recipe uses cake flour so I would be less concerned about overmixing (overmixing all purpose flour is what causes gluten to develop and make a tougher, dry cake). I think where things could be going wrong (with the reverse cream method listed) is with the eggs: they need to be beaten in one by one, scrape down the bowl often to ensure even mixing. You could also check the dates on your baking soda and baking powder to ensure they aren’t expired.
This looks delicious! I am wondering, if I am using this vanilla buttercream frosting for your lemon sugar cookies like on your instagram posting last week, does anything need to be altered to set on cookies? Or it will work as is?
Hi Allison! It will work perfectly as is
Hi, just wondering will this cake work if I bake it in 2 8 inch pans then fill and frost?
Hi is any video of this cake? I would like to know how to use the coloured food, I bought some colours but I don’t really know how to do it, do I mix the colours with the buttercream??hank you
if you are coloring the cake then you add them to the batter, if you are coloring the buttercream adds them to the buttercream – you only need a few drops of gel color
This looks lovely and I’m thinking about making it for a birthday. A couple of questions on the recipe – there’s no coconut oil under the ingredient list but it says to add it in the cake directions, does there need to be coconut oil? Is egg whites required or is the whole egg ok? I wasn’t sure since it lists eggs under ingredients rather than whites. Finally, would it be ok to sub buttermilk for yogurt (what I already have on hand)? Thanks so much!
JJ, thanks so much for your comment! You inspired me to try it this morning with buttermilk and it worked like a charm. I had an older version of the recipe that used egg whites/coconut oil which is why some of that was in the instructions but I’ve updated all of it to reflect the recipe I currently use (and love!). It’s now more straightforward and ingredients are simpler. Hope you love it!
Thank you so much for replying! I’m making this tomorrow. I love your recipes (made the 1 yolk cookies, 1 white cookies, pistachio cheesecake, & cherry blossom cakes so far.. Thanks again!