Glazed Orange Bundt Cake

Glazed Orange Bundt Cake - made October 9, 2021 from Sally's Baking Addiction

3 cups (315 grams) sifted cake flour, spooned and leveled

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

1 2/3 cups granulated sugar

4 large eggs, room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

zest from 2 oranges (about 2 packed tablespoons)

1/2 cup fresh orange juice

1/2 cup buttermilk, room temperature

Orange Glaze

1 1/4 cups (150 grams) sifted confectioners sugar

zest of 1 orange

2-3 tablespoons fresh orange juice

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly coat a Bundt pan with nonstick cooking spray and lightly flour; set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda; set aside.
3. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter on high speed until smooth and creamy, about 1 minute. Add the sugar and beat on high speed for 2 minutes. Beat in eggs and the vanilla until combined. Beat in orange zest and orange juice.
4. On low speed, alternately add the dry ingredients and buttermilk, mixing after each addition just until incorporated. Do not overmix.
5. Pour batter into prepared Bundt pan and smooth top. Bake 45-55 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the thickest part of the cake comes out clean or with a few crumbs. Let cool for several minutes then loosen the sides and center of the cake from the pan. Invert onto serving plate.
6. While the cake cools, make the glaze. Whisk the confectioners' sugar, 2 tablespoons of orange juice, zest and vanilla until combined. Add additional orange juice if desired for a thinner consistency. Drizzle half the glaze over the warm cake. Let cake cool completely and drizzle remaining glaze over it.

Confession time: I did this cake a disservice by taking it out too soon before it had fully baked. Normally I don't mind a slightly underbaked cake, especially a pound cake or any kind of cake because I can't abide a dry cake. Which is what usually occurs when a cake is overbaked. But I took this out too soon, not because of my preference for a moist cake but because I was fooled by the toothpick test.

When I inserted the toothpick into the cake after it had baked for 50 minutes, it came out clean. But turns out that was a false positive. The cake wasn't raw but the texture would've been better and less dense if I had baked it a few minutes longer. I should've known better as my oven typically takes longer to bake things than what the recipe calls for. 50 minutes was too good to be true.

Of course by the time I realized it was underbaked, I had already glazed it so it was too late to put back into the oven to bake some more. You can tell it's underbaked by the picture below. The very bottom of the cake has the right texture. But the cake didn't bake long enough for that texture to make it to the rest of the cake. Oops.

Underbaking the cake also affected the taste. Because I hadn't baked the cake long enough, the cake itself didn't have much flavor. Most of the orange flavor came from the glaze. I'll have to try making this again as recipes from Sally's Baking Addiction are almost always pretty amazing but my attempt wasn't. User error.