Lucy turned 30 a couple of weeks ago and we had a family party to celebrate. I gave her a few suggestions for what type of cake I could make her, and she decided on a Clementine Cake by Mary Berry. We couldn’t find single clementines at the shop so it turned into an orange cake. Paired with a cream cheese frosting, the cake is reminiscent of creamsicles (an ice cream bar with orange ice lolly on the outside), hence creamsicle cake. I also made brownies, and I promise I’ll put that recipe up here one day!
This cake tasted delicious— a buttery, orange flavour. Not going to lie, I really struggled to make the frosting. The recipe calls for mascarpone cheese and our shop was sold out for over two weeks. In the end, I used lactose-free cream cheese, but this is a bit softer, and contributed to my frosting being runny. I also misread the instructions (to be fair, they were slightly confusing), and put the majority of the orange into the frosting instead of the cake.
To salvage the frosting, I dumped half of the soupy mixture and blended in more butter and icing sugar to get a spreadable consistency. I’ll include the original recipe below and I encourage you to try it if you can get your hands on mascarpone. For a cream cheese frosting, I’d say go with your favourite version and add 1tbsp of the orange to it!
Ingredients:
275g. softened butter
1 orange, peel left on (you want 125g.)
275g. caster sugar
275g. self-raising flour
4 large eggs
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan. Grease and line two 8 inch round cake tins.
Place the orange into a pan of water and cover with a lid. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 30 minutes. Leave to cool, then quarter and remove any pips. Roughly chop and transfer to a bowl.
Add the butter, sugar, and flour to a bowl then add the eggs. Beat together with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Then stir in all but 1 tablespoon of the orange pulp (not 1 tbsp. like I did!). Divide evenly into tins.
Bake for 30-35 minutes until well risen and springy. Leave to cool for 5 minutes, then turn out onto wire racks to cool completely. Peel off the paper.
Make the icing and frost as desired. Store in the fridge.
Original Icing Recipe:
250g. full-fat mascarpone cheese
75g. softened butter
175g. icing sugar, sifted
1 tbsp. orange pulp
*My version was probably 175g. soft lactose-free cream cheese, 100g. butter and around 2 cups of icing sugar with the orange pulp. This made a semi-firm spreading consistency, but was not firm enough to pipe.
I made a paper template for the number 30 and used it to make a glitter 30 on the cake.
With regards to what we did for Lucy’s birthday, I took her out for breakfast at Bill’s and then we watched films in the afternoon. We then had a pizza party with Lucy’s family. Lucy says that 30 is off to a good start. I completely agree.
As a little side note — in terms of switches for being more eco-friendly, I bought some paper fans that can be re-used along with our birthday banner, rather than buying single-use balloons (buy similar ones here)[affiliate link]. We also didn’t use paper plates and just did more dishes. All leftover food went home with people, and the scraps went in the food waste pail. 🙂
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