Orange Cake

Folks-
This one comes in somewhere between a cooking tip and a recipe. I don't consider it a full-blown recipe because one of the ingredients is a mix, but it's a bit more than a tip since there are two modifications to the mix. Here it goes:

Ingredients:
1 White Cake Mix
1 Tbsp Orange Extract
1 1/2 Tbsp Yogurt (Flavor hardly matters.)

Prepare the white cake as the directions on the box say to (I usually use the whole egg recipe), but before mixing add in the orange extract and yogurt. Continue making the mix as the box instructs.

The cake will come out MUCH moister than the standard cake mix will because of the yogurt. In fact, I add yogurt to all of my cakes for this reason. If you don't have yogurt, sour cream works just as well. I used to exclusively use unflavored yogurt in the cake mix until I realized that the flavor of less than two tablespoons of flavored yogurt was being diluted by several cups of cake batter. I stay away from really strongly flavored yogurts, but darn near any fruit flavored yogurt is going to add no noticeable flavor changes to the cake.

For a frosting, I make a traditional buttercream (sometimes called an American Buttercream) frosting and add about 1 Teaspoon of Orange Extract to flavor it.

Giving credit where credit is due, this flavor is my mom's creation. We've even used Devil's Food Cake mixes with it for a good chocolate-orange flavor, but in general, the straight-up orange flavor is most people's favorite.

Hoping to post more recipes soon!

-Edly