HCB - True Orange Genoise (with and without curd)

This week's recipe for the Heavenly Cake Bakers was the True Orange Genoise. Although the recipe calls for the elusive Seville oranges, Rose also provides instructions for regular navel oranges, which is what I used. Marie was kind enough to offer me some Seville oranges that Vicki sent her, but by the time we agreed on the pickup, the oranges had started to go bad already.

I made the curd on Friday, baked the cakes (yes, that's 2 x 6" cakes) on Saturday, and assembled everything on Sunday. While making the curd, I didn't want to take any chances of it being undercooked. I found an orange curd recipe in Rose's P&PB that calls for cooking the curd to 185 F. I wanted to be on the safe side, and cooked it to 190 F. Although the curd tasted really good and wasn't "eggy" at all, I had a funny/itchy feeling in my throat after eating it. With all my food allergies, I didn't want to push my luck. So I decided to bake two 6" cakes instead of one 9" cake, so I could make two different fillings.

Enough said. I'll let the pictures do all the "talking" :o)

This is the navel orange curd. It thickened beautifully.

I made beurre noisette for the genoise and added a pinch of salt to it. Am I the only one who likes to dip their bread in the caramelized milk solids?

Baked two 6" cakes so I could use two different fillings.

After 20 minutes in the oven, the genoise looked like this. My favorite way to bake a genoise is in a spring form pan. As soon as it comes out of the oven, it has to be unmolded. It's a snap (no pun intended) when you use a spring form pan.

Carefully measured half the amount of curd called for in the recipe. I was over by 5 grams but I figured that was OK.

The assembled cake looked like this. Pretty huh? :o) I thought it was.

A slice of the True Orange Genoise. Just grab a fork and dig in!

Here's the cake with the orange whipped cream filling, aka Hanaâ's cake :o)

A big slice of Hanaâ's cake. I'm a good girl. I promise I'll wait until *after* dinner before eating all of it :o)

Orange whipped cream filling:
(my original recipe)

• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 oz sugar + 1 Tbsp orange zest: rub zest into sugar
  
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 cup orange juice reduced to 1 Tbsp in the microwave on High

Combine all the ingredients in a medium bowl and beat with mixer until stiff peaks are formed. Use immediately or refrigerate.

Final thoughts/tips:

• I took a very small bite of the curd-filled cake and liked it a lot. The orange flavor just explodes in your mouth. The slight bitterness of the dark chocolate glaze cuts through the sweetness and offers a very pleasant contrast. The cake could have been a bit more moist. Maybe I should have used all of the syrup. I had about 3 Tbsp left.
• The orange whipped cream filling was delicious. Light, fluffy, not overly sweet and chock full of orange flavor. This also paired very well with the dark chocolate.
  
• The genoise recipe didn't call for salt, so I added a large pinch to the butter when I was making beurre noisette.
• The recipe called for Wondra flour. This was my first time using it. Although the Wondra flour produced a finer crumb compared to cake flour, I think I prefer genoise made with cake flour. I find that the syrup is more readily absorbed when the crumb is a tiny bit coarser. I don't have scientific proof as to why but that's just a hunch.
  
• I didn't use the ganache called for in the recipe. Instead I used my standby chocolate glaze recipe to which I added 1 Tbsp of the syrup used on the cake and the zest of a 1/4 orange.
• Although the curd tasted great, given the mild reaction I had to it, I will probably avoid it in the future.
• Dip your knife in hot water, wipe it and then use it to cut clean cuts of cake. This is especially useful when cutting through a chocolate glaze layer.