Orange Velvet Cake with Creamy Chocolate Buttercream Frosting (2024)

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 35 minutes

Total Time: 55 minutes

Ingredients

For the Cake

• 1 1/4 cups sifted all purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups sifted cake flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups sugar, use a fine grain sugar if you have it but regular granulated sugar will work fine
• 2/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1/3 cup vegetable shortening at room temperature
• 2 tsp good quality vanilla extract
• 3 large eggs
• zest of two large oranges, finely minced
• 1 1/2 cups buttermilk

For the Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

• 4 cups icing sugar, powdered sugar
• 4 tbsp cocoa
• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup melted chocolate chips, cooled almost to room temperature, not hot
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2-4 tbsp milk

Instructions

1. Grease two 8 or 9 inch cake pans and line the bottoms with parchment paper. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
2. Sift together the all purpose flour, the cake flour, baking soda, baking powder salt and sugar. Set aside.
3. In the bowl of an electric mixer beat together the oil, shortening and vanilla well at high speed with whisk attachment until light and fluffy.
4. Beat in the eggs one at a time.
5. Fold in the orange zest.
6. Fold in the dry ingredients alternately with the buttermilk. I always add dry ingredients in three divisions and liquid ingredients in 2 divisions. It is very important to begin and end the additions with the dry ingredients. Do not over mix the batter. As soon as it has no lumps in the batter, pour into the two prepared 8 or 9 inch cake pans.
7. Bake at 325 degrees F for about 35 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. The 9 inch pans will bake faster because the cake will be shallower.
8. Allow the cake to cool in the pans for 10 minutes before turning out onto wire racks to cool completely.
9. I’ve frosted this cake with chocolate buttercream frosting but plain vanilla buttercream is great on this cake too or add a little orange zest to it for some extra zing. Marshmallow frosting is a terrific choice for this cake too.

To make the Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

1. Mix the butter, cocoa and icing sugar together until the butter is broken up well into small pieces and distributed throughout the sugar. It may still look powdery at this point.
2. Add the melted chocolate chips, vanilla extract and a couple of tablespoons of the milk.
3. Add only 2 tbsp milk at he beginning and add more only as needed to bring the frosting to a spreadable consistency. Beat together well until smooth, fluffy and creamy. If you add a little too much milk just add a few tbsp more of icing sugar to bring it back to the proper consistency.

The nutritional information provided is automatically calculated by third party software and is meant as a guideline only. Exact accuracy is not guaranteed. For recipes where all ingredients may not be used entirely, such as those with coatings on meats, or with sauces or dressings for example, calorie & nutritional values per serving will likely be somewhat lower than indicated.