Italian "Water" Cake with Orange Juice

The entire state of California has been on shelter-in-place the last week. Residents are recommended to only get out of the house for essential needs: food, medicine. Most people have been home cooking and rationing, so we have been only going out for groceries once a week.

What that means is that we have to be very creative with our recipes. I’ve been rationing my stash of soy creamer because I don’t want to go to the store. If I don’t have an ingredient, I would substitute or omit.

Hence this water cake…

In all honesty, I made this cake before the shelter-in-place. I have been meaning to make a second version of this cake because folks liked my first version. It just ended up too doughy and heavier than I expected. Now, I have an opportunity to make it a second time and use up the items in my pantry.

For the second version, I decided to use a bit of almond flour for some texture (and protein). I just started using almond flour. I also cut down on sugar a bit.

Here's what I have... hope you enjoy.

Italian "Water" Cake with Orange Juice
Based on Italian Water Cake no eggs, no milk, no butter

Ingredients

• 12 oz orange juice (about a small container)
• 2 ½ cups Italian type 00 flour
• 1/2 cup almond flour
• 2/3 cup + 1 TBSP white sugar
• 1/3 cup of canola oil
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp cardamom
• Pinch of salt

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
2. Sift the flours, sugar, baking powder together into a large bowl. Sift, sift, sift – As my friend Jen said, one can never sift too much.
3. In a separate bowl, combine the oil and orange juice and mix well. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the water and oil and mix it all.
4. When the oven is hot, pour the mixture into a greased cake pan and bake for about 45 minutes. Note: Test the cake with a toothpick in the center before removing it from the oven.
5. If you like, you can dust the cake with powdered sugar or top it with yogurt and jam.

Verdict

I love this recipe because it does not use a lot of ingredients, which is perfect for a shelter-in-place. However, you do need 00 flour to make this work. I just happened to have some. Don’t use regular flour because the results will not be as good (according to the comments in the original recipe).

It does taste very good. It's not light like an angel food cake, but it's delicious. I am now thinking of a coffee-flavored cake, but I'm thinking that it would technically require milk - so its a work in progress.

Also, check out the original recipe. Mine did not vary from it that much, but I think its unique enough to share. I also converted some of the measurements to friendlier terms.

Let me know what you think.