High Altitude Cardamom Orange Christmas Sprinkle Cake
Soft and fluffy cake scented with ground cardamom and fresh orange zest, with brown butter frosting and Christmas sprinkles.
All recipes on Curly Girl Kitchen are developed for high altitude at 5,280 feet. See FAQs for adjusting to higher or lower elevations.
Equipment
- 6-inch Round Cake Pans (x3)
- Stand Mixer with Paddle Attachment
Ingredients
Cake
- ¾ cup granulated sugar
- 1 tsp fresh orange zest
- 1 ½ cups + 2 tbsp cake flour, fluffed, spooned and leveled
- 1 ½ tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp ground cardamom
- ½ tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
- 1 large egg
- 1 large egg white (save the yolk for another use)
- ¾ cup buttermilk
- ¼ cup unsalted butter, melted
- ¼ cup vegetable oil
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Frosting
- 1 ½ cups unsalted butter
- 3 cups powdered sugar
- 1 tbsp meringue powder, optional
- ¼ tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
- 1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
- ¼ cup milk or cream
- ½ cup assorted Christmas sprinkles
Instructions
Cake
- Preheat the oven to 350 F, and position a rack in the center of the oven. Lightly spray the bottoms of three 6-inch cake pans with non-stick baking spray.
- In a bowl, measure the sugar then rub the orange zest into the sugar until fragrant. Sift in the flour, baking powder, cardamom and salt, and whisk to combine.
- Add the egg, egg white, buttermilk, melted butter, oil, and vanilla, and whisk just until combined and mostly smooth, but don't over-mix.
- Divide the batter between the cake pans. Bake the cakes for about 18-22 minutes, until a cake tester comes out clean, and the tops spring back when gently touched.
- Set the pans on a cooling rack, cover loosely with a clean kitchen towel, and cool completely before frosting.
Frosting
- In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Continue to cook the butter, swirling the pan occasionally. It will hiss and spatter a bit, as the water evaporates, and the milk solids settle onto the bottom of the pan. When it's nearly ready, a layer of foam will form on top of the butter, and if you nudge the foam aside, you'll see nutty, golden brown milk solids on the bottom of the pan (if they turn dark brown or black, you've gone too far and burned the butter). The browning process might take about 5-10 minutes.
- Remove the pan from the heat and use a spatula to scrape all the browned milk solids off the bottom of the pan. Pour the browned butter and all the browned bits into a bowl.
- Let cool until the butter returns to a spreadable solid consistency. To speed this up, put the bowl in the refrigerator for 1-2 hours and stir the butter every 20 minutes or so until it's firmed up but still spreadable. (I usually brown the butter in the evening, then just let it sit at room temperature until the next day, when I'm ready to frost the cake.)
- In the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the cooled brown butter for 1 minute until smooth.
- In a separate bowl, combine the powdered sugar, meringue powder and salt. With the mixer on low, add the powdered sugar mixture by spoonfuls, then the vanilla. Increase the speed to medium (#4/6 on a Kitchen Aid mixer), and beat for about 5 minutes until light and fluffy, scraping the bowl several times. The process of browning the butter removes the water from the butter, so this buttercream will be too dry unless you add back in some liquid. So while you're beating the buttercream, add in the milk or cream a tablespoon at a time, until you're happy with the consistency for spreading onto your cake. Turn the speed down to "stir" and mix for 1 minute to pop large air bubbles.
- Remove the cooled cakes from the pan. Fill and frost the cake layers with the buttercream, then cover the cake with a thin crumb coat of frosting. Chill for 30 minutes to set the crumb coat.
- Add a few tablespoons of sprinkles (such as nonpareils and quins/confetti sprinkles) to the remaining buttercream, and frost the cake all over with a final coat of buttercream.
- Before the frosting crusts over, decorate the cake all over with more sprinkles. (I hand placed every sprinkle on my cake using tweezers.)
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