Orange Vanilla Bean Cake

This Orange Vanilla Bean Cake recipe is moist, tender, and has wonderful flavor! If you love orange cakes, you must try this recipe!

This refreshing layer cake is moist, fluffy, and has the perfect amount of orange and vanilla flavor with tiny flecks of vanilla bean in every slice.

Orange Vanilla Bean Cake on a cake pedestal.

Today's recipe is an updated version of a previous recipe that we had on the site. (You can find the original in the Notes section of our recipe card at the bottom of this post.) We hope that you enjoy it!

Table of Contents

Why We Love It

There are so many reasons to love this Orange Vanilla Bean cake! Here are just a few:

Wonderful flavor from orange extract and vanilla bean paste.
Tastes amazing with Orange Cream Cheese Frosting
Makes a great birthday cake or summer cake!
We love orange cakes and have made several over the years. We also have a great Orange Dreamsicle Cake which has a slightly more dense texture with a finer crumb, as well as a fluffy scratch orange cake (which calls for orange juice from concentrate.)

How to Make Orange Vanilla Bean Cake

You can find the full, printable recipe at the bottom of this post, or by clicking the "skip to recipe" button at the very top of this post ;0) - Here is just a quick rundown of our steps!

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F, grease and flour three 8x2 inch round cake pans.
Dry Ingredients: In a medium sized bowl add the cake flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Whisk to blend, set aside.

Wet Ingredients: In another bowl or measuring cup add the sour cream, freshly squeezed orange juice, orange zest, vanilla extract and orange extract. Blend with a fork and set aside.

Wet Ingredients for Orange Vanilla Bean Cake

In the bowl of your mixer, mix the softened butter until smooth. Gradually add the sugar and mix on medium speed for 3 to 5 minutes until it is lightened in color and fluffy. If adding orange coloring to your batter, you can do it at this time (or any time during mixing process).

Add the eggs one at a time, mixing until the yellow of the yolk disappears.
With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture and the sour cream mixture alternately, beginning and ending with flour mixture (3 additions of dry ingredients and 2 of wet). Mix just until combined.

Orange Vanilla Bean Cake batter in a mixing bowl.

Divide the batter between the three pans smoothing the tops with the back of a spoon.
Bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached. Bake times can vary- Start checking as the 25 minute mark approaches, and adjust accordingly. Let the cakes cool 5 to 10 minutes then turn out.

Orange Vanilla Bean Cake layers, freshly baked.

Makes 7 cups cake batter. Works for cupcakes also. (Approximately 28 cupcakes.)

Orange Vanilla Bean Cream Cheese Frosting

There are many frostings and fillings that would pair well with our orange vanilla cake layers, but we decided to go with a twist on our classic cream cheese frosting recipe.

We use both orange extract and vanilla bean paste in this recipe. As written, the orange flavor is a bit more pronounced than the vanilla bean, however feel free to play around with the orange extract and vanilla amounts if you'd prefer more vanilla bean flavor!

It is delicious, creamy, not too sweet, and pipes great too! As with all cream cheese frostings, this orange vanilla bean version is softer than your average buttercream.

For this reason, keep in mind that if it is too soft for you to frost the cake, just pop it in the refrigerator for a few minutes to firm things up. You can also do this with your filled piping bags as needed!

Other Fillings and Frostings to Pair with Orange Vanilla Bean Cake

In addition to today's Orange Vanilla Bean Cream Cheese Frosting recipe, we have more great options to share with you:

Classic Vanilla Buttercream (You can substitute vanilla bean paste for the vanilla if you you'd like- or add a little orange extract!)

Orange Curd Filling

Whipped Orange Mascarpone Frosting (as used in our Orange Pineapple Cake recipe)

Orange Cream Filling (as used in our Orange Dreamsicle Cake recipe)

Orange Spice Cream Cheese Frosting

Assembling & Decorating the Orange Vanilla Bean Cake

Place the first cooled cake layer on the cake base or pedestal. Spread with Orange Vanilla Bean Cream Cheese Frosting.

Repeat for the next two cake layers.

Fill in any remaining gaps between the cake layers with frosting, and then crumb coat the cake with a thin layer of frosting. At this point, I always like to chill the crumb coated cake in the freezer for about 15 minutes or so to firm up the frosting.

This optional chilling step is helpful because it ensures that the cake will be nice and firm as you apply the final coat of frosting.

I applied the final coat of cream cheese frosting to the cake, smoothed it with a bench scraper while rotating it on the turntable to level out the frosting, and then added texture using a small offset spatula.

Texturing the frosting on the Orange Vanilla Bean Cake.

FAQs

If you've never baked with Vanilla Bean Paste before, you may be surprised to learn that it is not a paste at all- it has a much more fluid, syrup consistency.

This rich and delicious vanilla "paste" is a combination of vanilla extract, vanilla seeds, and a natural thickener. It is a happy medium between vanilla extract and vanilla pods, and the rich vanilla flavor is heavenly!

I also love the beautiful look of the vanilla bean flecks in cakes and desserts that use vanilla bean paste. You could get this same effect by scraping out vanilla bean pods, but using vanilla bean paste is so much more convenient!

Yes! If you don't have vanilla bean paste on hand, don't worry. You can use your favorite vanilla extract in this recipe with wonderful results- simply substitute the same amount of vanilla extract in place of the vanilla bean paste.

Also keep in mind that you can substitute vanilla bean paste for any recipe calling for vanilla extract if you are feeling fancy and want to kick up the vanilla flavor a bit!

While I haven't tried this myself, the most common formula that I have seen for using scraped-out Vanilla Bean Pods instead of Vanilla Bean Paste or Vanilla Extract is that 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract is equivalent to one 2-inch piece of vanilla bean.

So, the typical vanilla bean pod would give you the equivalent of 3-4 teaspoons of vanilla extract. As with anything, taste and adjust to your liking.

Many of our favorite cake recipes call for sour cream. It adds richness and moisture without thinning the cake batter, and makes for a really nice texture.

Most cakes taste best at room temperature (or close to room temperature), especially cakes that contain butter.

Just as a stick of butter becomes very firm in the refrigerator, cakes that contain butter become firm when chilled as well. Moving the cake from the refrigerator to the kitchen counter a couple of hours before serving allows time for the cake to warm and soften.

More Citrus Cakes to Try

We love light and fruity cakes year-round, but we especially crave them in the spring and summer! Here are just a few of our favorite citrus flavored cakes, from orange cakes to lemon cakes and more!

Orange Dreamsicle Cake and Orange Dreamsicle Cake- Doctored Cake Mix
Lemon Cake from Scratch and Lemon Cake Mix cake
Lemon Buttermilk Cake
Lemon Blueberry Sour Cream Pound Cake
Lemon Orange Pound Cake
Orange Spice Cake- Doctored Mix
Lemon Coconut Cake

Thanks so much for stopping by today! We hope that you enjoy the recipe. Make sure to check out our full collection of delicious cake recipes, as well as our video library of free cake decorating tutorials!

**5/14/24 This is an updated version of our previous Orange Vanilla Bean Cake. For those of you that are searching for the original, you can find it here.

Have you made this? We would LOVE for you to leave a ⭐️ rating as well as a comment and photo below! We really appreciate your feedback!