Orange Sponge Cake with Orange-scented Yogurt (THB)

Glad that Charmaine from MiMi Bakery House has chosen this almost-fat-free orange sponge cake recipe for our 15th THB bake. THB is an baking event organised by my friend, Joyce from Kitchen Flavours. With a group of gorgeous ladies, we are baking all recipes from the book, "Coffee Cakes" by Lou Seibert Pappas until every recipe has been baked from this book.
 
This recipe is great! I like it because the cake itself does not contain any added fat or butter and is made using a fail-proof sponge cake method...

Based on traditional methods, most sponge cakes are made by beating whole eggs and sugar at first until the egg mixtures are thick, fluffy and lightly coloured. Achieving this stage is critical for sponge cake baking and failing to do so will result sponge cakes to be tough and not spongy at all. I was told at a William Angliss course that beating just the egg white with sugar is an alternative method to make sponge cake and it is easier and much more reliable than using the beating-whole eggs traditional sponge cake method.

This sponge cake that I'm baking uses the alternative sponge cake method. Briefly, the method combines egg yolks, orange juice and vanilla together first. All dry ingredients with half amount of sugar were then added into the egg yolk mixture to form a thick mixture. Meanwhile, the egg whites and the other half of the sugar were whisked to form thick glossy peaks. And eventually, both egg white and egg yolk mixture were combined together to form the final cake batter.

Prior to this THB bake, I wasn't satisfied with a few of my previous THB bakes. I thought of taking a break and not baking this cake. Luckily that I baked this cake as this is actually nice and fluffy to eat. Instead of serving the cake with its original butter-and-icing-sugar based frosting, I have choose to eat this low-fat cake with orange-scented yogurt for less guilt, extra-happiness and lots feel-good feelings. Cheers!

My orange sponge cake with orange-scented yogurt

Making the cake...

... and baking it.

Making a healthier "orange frosting"

Fluffy sponge cake... sorry about my knife being not sharp enough to give a clean cut

I love this guilt-free way to indulge a delicious cake.

Being the rule of this event, only the host of the chosen bake can post the recipe in her blog post. Please visit Charmaine from MiMi Bakery House for the detailed recipe of this bake.

And, here are the notes and modifications that I made for my bake.

My ingredients list (which is 2/3 amount of the original recipe)

Orange Sponge Cake

125g cake flour (with 8% protein content)
50g + 50g caster sugar (50g for beating the egg whites to glossy peaks)
1/3 tsp salt
1/3 tsp baking powder
4 large eggs, separated
2/3 tsp cream of tartar
40 ml fresh orange juice
vanilla seeds from 1 vanilla pod

Orange scented yogurt
200g natural vanilla yogurt with less than 5% fat

1/4 tsp of zest from 1 orange

Using this amount of ingredients of the above recipe, I've baked my cake using a 20 cm un-greased tube pan at 160°C fan forced for 45 min.

Modifications that I have made from the original:

• I have reduced the sugar content of the cake from about 200g to 100g for 2/3 amount of the recipe.
• Instead of using vanilla extract, I have replaced it with vanilla seeds scraped from 1 vanilla pod. The vanilla pod was lightly soaked in the egg yolk and orange juice mixture for 5 mins and the seeds were scraped off and thoroughly squeezed out of the pod.
• Instead of the original orange frosting made with butter, icing sugar and orange juice, I have chose to eat my cake with orange-scented yogurt which is just vanilla yogurt mixed with about 1/4 tsp of zest from 1 orange. 

Happy Baking

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