Suum Cuique

This is one of my favourite cakes. To eat and to make. Making chiffon cakes is kind of like swimming or cycling - it appears difficult to master, but once you know how to do it, you never forget! *grin* But for some reason, although it comes as second nature to me now when it comes to making chiffon cakes, I have never quite managed to handle spongecakes with such ease. I remember my first spongecake - it came out so hard, I could have use it to make a table flower arrangement! Yup, just like those green florist sponge.. ^_^ Even til today, I can never be sure whether my spongecake will turn out or not.

I go back a long way with chiffon cakes (I wrote about it here). I guess it came quite naturally after years of seeing how it's done. But it was also a case of finding the right recipe. I tried a few recipes in my early attempts but I found them to be too dense and not soft enough. Yes, like Harry Potter and his wand, there is a recipe out of hundreds out there, that is just right for you! Mine came from Florence's Orange Chiffon Cake which I adapted into a pandan chiffon. She wasn't kidding when she said it was her "best selling chiffon recipe"! I've never actually made the orange chiffon, I just took her recipe and immediately changed it to a pandan chiffon and it worked even for the first time! It has always garnered positive reviews and I knew this recipe was for keeps! Thank you so much for sharing, Florence!

In case anyone would like to try my way of making a chiffon, here's a detailed-ish pictorial (recipe to follow at the end):

It's basically a 2-bowl operation. One mixture with the egg yolks, and the other egg whites. All the ingredients except for egg whites, sugar and cream of tartar, go into bowl A. The other 3 ingredients go into my food processor using the whisk attachment. My other tools include a spatula and metal spoon.


Florence gave some really good tips for whisking egg whites. One, before adding anything into the whites, whisk until bubbles form. Then sprinkle in the cream of tartar and whisk until it is white in colour. Add in the sugar, 1/3 at a time, whisking well in between the additions, until it is stiff and the peaks don't fall. It will look glossy.


Another good tip from Florence is to add half the whipped whites into the yolk mix and blend it really well. This will lighten the yolk mix and make it easier to fold in the rest of the whites. I prefer to use a metal spoon to fold in the whites because it will cut through the batter without deflating the air bubbles. My mum taught me to fold in a figure 8 motion, that is stir as if I am writing number 8 in the bowl and occasionally scraping the sides of the bowl to ensure everything is well mixed.

I have seen some people becoming scared to stir too much, worrying that they might deflate the cake batter and leave small chunks of whites floating in the batter. This will cause the cake to collapse as the chunks of whites will disintegrate as the cake bakes, leaving big gaps inside the cake. So don't worry too much about that and stir as thoroughly and lightly as you can until there are no visible bits of whites left.


When it comes out of the oven, it will be nicely puffed up. But after you cool it by inverting it onto a glass bottle (newer cake moulds will have little legs at the rim, which eliminates the need for a bottle. Mine is inherited from my mum, which means the pan could be about as old as me..), it will deflate slightly. If it deflates a lot, or looks lopsided, that means the whites have not been whipped enough or mixed in properly.

My knife does not seem thin enough to remove the cake. Hopefully, a chiffon cake will come my way soon.. ^_^


Tell me, who can resist a piece of a cottony-soft fragrant piece of pandan chiffon cake? :)


Pandan Chiffon Cake

Ingredients:
95g plain Flour + 20g cornflour
3/4 tsp Baking powder

85ml Coconut cream (santan) or milk**
60ml Corn oil
1-2 tsp pandan essence

**If using milk, add about 3 tbsp coconut powder to flour

5 egg yolks + 30g castor sugar + Salt 1/4 tsp

5 egg whites + 50g castor sugar + 1/2 tsp cream of tartar

Method:
1. Sieve both flours and baking powder.
2. Use hand whisk to whisk egg yolks until creamy and light in colour. Add in corn oil then coconut cream (milk) and pandan essence.
3. Add in flour mixture (and coconut powder if using) into yolk mix and mix well.
4. Beat egg white with electric beater until big bubbles formed. Sprinkle in cream of tartar and beat until it is white in colour.
5. Add in 50g sugar 3 times (a little at a time) and beat until stiff peaks are formed.
6. Pour 1/2 egg white into flour mixture in (3) and blend well.
7. Pour in the rest of the egg white and mix until well-blended.
8. Bake at 175C for 35 minutes or until cooked.
9. Invert the cooked cake during cooling process.


Note: Actually, I have a confession to make. If you look at picture of the cake batter after everything is mixed in, you might notice that there are a lot of air bubbles. It shouldn't. The pictures taken pre-baking and finished product are actually on 2 occasions. Of course when I make a conscious effort to document my recipe, things will not go the way it's supposed to go (it's a known fact, called Murphy's Law..). Never mind the countless (but picture-less) perfect chiffon cakes I've churned out before this. The first cake turned out lopsided (that's how I know lopsided cakes means incorrectly mixed batter..). The second cake, I made with no intentions of writing about it. Luckily I remembered to remind myself to snap photos as it was baking in the oven in case it turned out as it should be and it did!

Labels: cake, pandan chiffon cake