Chiffon Cakes

Lately, I have been addicted to baking chiffon cakes.  My family has been very cooperative by eating the entire 9 inch cake per day for almost a week consecutively.  So far, I have tried 5 different flavors - matcha, earl grey, pandan, mocha, orange.  The ingredients are very simple - just eggs, oil, cake flour, and water/milk/juice/etc.  The flavor combination is almost endless.  Chiffon cakes very, very, versatile indeed!  I just wonder how can I make this cake in a vegan version since this recipe relies so much on eggs!

Pandan Chiffon Cake

I got my recipe from Just One Cookbook.  Her chiffon cake recipes are very easy to follow and the cake comes out moist but not too sweet.  I also loved the fact that she has measurements for 3 difference chiffon cake pan sizes.  I got my 9 inch chiffon cake pan from IKEA years ago and mostly used it to bake cheesecake.  Her 20 cm measurement was actually perfect for my pan.

I did make some tweaks to her recipe and my notes are in red for easy reference-

9 inch / 23 cm pan from IKEA

Basic ingredients - you will need these no matter what flavor you want to make

wet:
5 large eggs, separated (I use an egg separator to separate my yolks and the egg whites.  You really don't want to get
any yokes in your whites and lately the eggs I get from the market is very fragile, i.e. the yolk membrane breaks easily.)
130g sugar (set approximately 1/3 of the sugar aside.  I use caster sugar if it is available in my pantry but most of the time, I just use granulated sugar.  When I make the pandan flavor, I also use my coconut sugar instead of regular sugar.  The key point is, just make sure all the sugar crystal melted before you bake your cake.)
60ml neutral oil (neutral oil just makes oil with little or no flavor)
95-100ml water/milk/coffee/juice (if you live in a very dry climate, adjust your water content slightly.  I live in Macau and the average humidity is >80% and I find 95-100ml comes out ok.  The temperature during the last week averaged 15-18C.)

dry:
120g cake flour (sift your dry ingredients together.  If you don't have cake flour handy, you can make your own with All Purpose Flour + corn starch but I find the cakes comes out fluffier when proper cake flour is used)
5g baking powder

(optional) 3/4-1 tsp cream of tartare / a few drops of lemon juice / vinegar

Process

1. Preheat oven to 170C.

2. Whisk egg yolks with 1/3 of the sugar.  I saw some people whisking the yolks over steaming water to get the sugar to melt faster.  Haven't tried myself yet.

 

3. Add oil into #1 and whisk, do the same thing with the water/milk/juice.  Whisk till everything is incorporated and sugar all melted.

 

4. Sifted all the dry ingredients (including things like matcha / chocolate powder) and add into #2 by batch.  Whisk till the mixture is smooth without any lumps.

5. Beat egg whites with the remaining 2/3 sugar by batch.  Cream of tartar is optional but I find the egg whites much easier to beat when added.  My mom bought the cream of tartar years ago to make some other cake so I thought I will put it into good use even though cream of tartar never expires.  (Or else it will just sit in my pantry till eternity.)  Beat till soft peaks are formed but do not overbeat the egg whites.

6. Whisk 1/3 of #4 into #3.  Fold the remaining #4 into #4 using swift but gentle strokes until the egg whites are fully incorporated. 

7. Pour #5 into the chiffon cake pan.  (Remember: don't use non-stick pan and don't grease your pan!  I don't even line mine and yes, washing the pan is a PITA.)

8. Run a spatula in the batter a few times and gently tap the chiffon cake pan against the kitchen counter to get rid of large air bubbles that are trapped in the cake batter.

9. Bake at 170C for 40-45 minutes.  (I don't like cracks in my cake so I changed to 160C for 45-50 minutes.)

10. Shock the cake when it's done baking by dropping it on the counter.  Invert your cake pan immediately and let the cake fully cool before removing the cake from the pan.

11. Run a knife along the outer and inner ring of the pan, put the cake out, run the knife again along the bottom of the cake pan.  Invert a cake over a serving plate.  Decorate as you like and enjoy!  (If you are really picky, you can invest in an offset spatula and a cake pan with a flat bottom.

Flavors I have tried so far - to be updated as more flavors are attempted.

1. Matcha - 20g of matcha powder sifted with the dry ingredients.  It was my first time so the cake came out less than ideal.  Despite it's looks, it was a tasty cake.  Lessons learned from this attempt - (1) my pan is too big so I can't use the original recipe; (2) don't line the pan; (3) must beat egg whites more; (4) must not open oven door to check on the cake and invert the cake immediately after baking.

2. Earl Grey - 4 sachets of Mariage Feres French Earl Grey tea bags.  2 was used to brew 120ml of tea and 2 was grinded.  Yet, I still find the earl grey flavor very weak.  My friend joked I should use a stronger tea (e.g. pu'er) next time.  I think I might test out my black/chai/Thai tea next time.  I also used the 6 eggs portion this time and found its too much for my pan.  There were cracks in my cake which affected the cooling process and caused the cake to deflate too much in the middle.

I gave my friend half of the cake and she decorated it.
Looks much nicer, right?

3. Pandan - I didn't have fresh coconut milk and pandan leaves so I used 95ml whole milk and pandan flavoring instead.  This cake came out looking the best and a hint of pandan flavor can still be tasted.  My mom said she will get some fresh coconut milk and pandan leaves from the market next time.  But alas, I found the 5 eggs portion perfect for my tin.  Still cracks but one step at a time.

 

 

Our family average about 1 cake per day. 
Compared to store bought cakes, at least I know what I have put into these cakes.



Update (1/7/2019): I made another pandan chiffon using fresh pandan leaves extract.  Except for it less than perfect looks, I think it is perfect!

  

 

4. Mocha - some wanted chocolate and some wanted coffee so the compromise was mocha.  I used my Delonghi to brew 4 shots of espresso (~120 ml) and added 20g of Vittoria Chocochino's drinking chocolate powder (it says "original Italian style" on the can.  The can says the chocolate powder is already sweetened and contains milk solids.  The cake came out moister and sweeter than normal so I probably should have reduced the amount of coffee liquid and sugar or baked slightly longer?  My mom commented the coffee flavor can be stronger and the chocolate needs to be slightly weaker so this flavor has room for improvement and yet to be perfected.  There are still cracks in the cake but at least I have narrow the problem down to oven temperature and time.

5.  Orange - I used one Sunkist orange and its zest for flavoring.  I got ~100ml of juice from this particular orange and did not discard/filtered out the pulp.  I peel the zest and chopped it since the zester at home is too dull and needs to be replaced.  I also turned down the oven temp by 10 degrees but increased the baking time by to 45 minutes.  The cake finally turn out perfect without cracks but shrunk a bit too much for my liking in the cooling process.  I just need to remember to drop the cake against a counter to shock it next time.  The orange is also very sweet so I should have reduced the sugar.

Some other flavor I am planning to try: lemon, black/chai/Thai tea, pandan with the real stuff, lavender, salted sakura, coffee/chocolate stand alone or a black forest, black sesame, etc.  Any other flavors you guys can think of?