2 Chiffon cakes - cooked dough method

I have a pack of coconut milk in the fridge, so it meant baking something that uses it up, instead of the coconut milk going into the bin. Was given a few pieces of chiffon cakes baked by a relative yesterday but was disappointed with the flavour and texture, so I decided the family shall eat decent chiffon cakes today!


The cooked dough method of making chiffon yields a texture that I really love.... airy and yet not too soft and floppy. So besides using the cooked dough method I posted for pandan chiffon, I also adjusted the gula melaka chiffon recipe to bake using the cooked dough method. Both turned out well. :)


Here's the cooked dough method for the gula melaka chiffon recipe:


What you need

• 100gm gula melaka (i shredded it so that it melts faster)
• 67gm coconut milk
• 4 nos egg yolks
• 2.5 tbsp corn oil
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 93gm plain flour
• 4 egg whites
• 1/8 tsp cream of tartar
• 33gm castor sugar

What to do

• Preheat oven to 175 degrees.
• Melt gula melaka in a pot with coconut milk, salt and corn oil over low heat, when the sides are bubbling, turn fire off and sift in the plain flour. Whisk till combined.
• Whisk in the egg yolks till well blended and set aside.
• In another bowl, whip the egg whites with cream of tartar till foamy, slowly add in the castor sugar and whip till stiff peaks.
• Add 1/4 of the whipped egg whites to the egg yolk mixture to lighten it and then transfer contents into the remaining egg white and fold in.
• Ensure that the batter is well combined and then pour into cake mold.
• Bake for 40mins.
• Invert cake mold immediately and let it cool completely before unmolding cake from mold.

Orange Chiffon Cake - Cooked Dough Method

I first tried out the cooked dough method of chiffon cake using this same recipe. I failed in that attempt.... frankly, I have not figured out why. Maybe at that time, I cooked the dough too long, resulting in a very dry and overcooked dough... or maybe I had mistakenly measured the wrong amount of liquid... When I attempted this recipe last weekends, everything went so well that I really cannot understand what I had done wrong in that 1st disastrous attempt.

Anyhoo... this cake turned out so fluffy and good that it was very well received by the family.

Here's the recipe for a 18cm mold.

What you need

• 4 nos. egg yolks
• 75gm cake flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 92gm orange juice (from 2 oranges)
• 40gm corn oil
• 1 tbsp orange zest (abt 2 oranges)
• 4 nos. egg whites
• 65gm castor sugar
• 1/4 tsp cream of tartar (optional)

What to do

• Preheat oven to 160C.
• Place orange juice and corn oil to boil. Once you see that the sides starts to bubble, off the heat and immediately sift in the cake flour and baking powder. Mix till combined.
• Whisk in an egg yolk at a time, till well combined, then whisk in the orange zest.
• Whip egg whites with sugar till wet stiff peaks.
• Fold in 1/3 of the whipped egg whites into the cooked dough to lighten it. Then proceed to fold in remaining whites.
• Pour batter into the mold, bang on the countertop a couple on times to get ride of air pockets before sending the mold into the oven.
• Bake at 160C for about 40 mins. 
• Cool completely, inverted on your counter before unmolding cake.

Green Tea with Azuki Beans Chiffon Cake (cooked dough method)

As mentioned, I did some experimentation with the cooked-dough method for chiffon cake. This time, using green tea with azuki beans.

The cake turned out denser and not as fluffy. After adding the flour, the batter turned very dry, kinda like the orange chiffon attempt I tried before. But did it turn out better than the orange chiffon. Not as good as the pandan one, but still soft and nice. Maybe more liquid is needed for Green Tea... will try this again when I have the time. :) Here's the recipe for anyone who wants to give it a go.

What you need

• 5 nos. Egg Yolk
• 110gm milk
• 50gm corn oil 
• 90gm Cake flour
• 1 and 1/2 tbsp green tea powder
• 100gm cooked azuki beans
• 5 nos. Egg white
• 80gm Castor Sugar  

What to do

• Preheat oven at 170 deg C
• Cook milk and oil together till you see some bubbles at the side of the pot, while is warmed add in sifted flour and green tea powder and mix well using a whisk.
• Whisk in egg yolks one by one and set aside.
• Whisk egg whites till foamy and add in sugar whisk till stiff.
• Add in 1/3 meringue into the cooked dough and fold well.
• Pour this mixture back to the balance meringue and fold well until well-combined.
• Fold in the azuki beans.
• Pour into a 20cm chiffon mould, bake at 150 deg C bake for 40 mins.
• Invert the cake to cool, unmould when completely cooled.

(Tip: Fold in whipped egg whites when the dough is still warm.)

Pandan Chiffon Cake (cooked dough method)

I saw this cooked-dough method in one taiwanese blog a few months back. The blogger baked an orange chiffon using this method and I decided to give it a try. However, the cake did not turn out well. I had problems when I added flour to the batter. It was really dry and lumpy. Needless to say, the cake did not rise high and when baked it was more like a dense sponge cake. So I made rum balls with that. :P I had in mind to try it again soon. I was blog-hopping and came across Wen's post about her pandan cake using the same method. I knew it's time to give it another try.

I made slight modification to her recipe as I did not have pandan juice on hand. Here's what I did:

What you need

• 5 nos. Egg Yolk
• 110gm Coconut milk
• 50gm Butter
• 90gm Cake flour
• 1/2 tsp pandan paste
• 5 nos. Egg white
• 80gm Castor Sugar

What to do

• Preheat oven at 170 deg C
• Cook coconut milk, butter and pandan paste together till butter melted, while is warmed add in sifted flour and mix well using a whisk.
• Whisk in egg yolks one by one and set aside.
• Whisk egg whites till foamy and add in sugar whisk till stiff.
• Add in 1/3 meringue into the cooked dough and fold well.
• Pour this mixture back to the balance meringue and fold well until well-combined.
• Pour into a 20cm chiffon mould, bake at 150 deg C bake for 40 mins.
• Invert the cake to cool, unmould when completely cooled.

(Tip: Fold in whipped egg whites when the dough is still warm.)

The baked chiffon tasted very different from the ones made using the conventional method. This cake has a finer structure and it's really soft and fluffy. The family gave it the thumbs-up. I'll be using this method to try out different flavours. Stay tuned!

Tea in a cake - Earl Grey Chiffon

This is one cake which grows on you. It may taste a little bland when u 1st bite into it, but after tasting in your mouth, it has a very subtle and lovely earl grey tea fragrance and you will start to take bite after bite. :P

However, I think if I were to make this a 2nd time, I'll probably steep some tea bags in the liquid so that it'll impart a stronger tea fragrant in the cake. Also I adjusted the recipe to a 4-egg recipe as I want a taller cake.

Recipe adapted from HHB. Thank you!

What you need

• 3 satchels of Earl Grey tea powder (I used Twinnings)
• 133g cake flour
• 1 3/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 4nos egg yolks
• 50g caster sugar
• 65g vegetable oil
• 100ml water
• 4nos egg whites
• 53g caster sugar

What to do

• Place egg yolks in a mixing bowl with sugar, whisk till the mixture becomes turns pale.
• Add in the oil and water, whisking till the mixture is well combined. Sieve in the flour, baking powder and salt and whisk to fully incorporated into the batter. Add in the earl grey powder and mix well.
• In another bowl, whip egg whites it becomes frothy and foamy. Add in sugar gradually and continue to whip till wet stiff peaks.
• Fold in 1/3 of the whipped egg white into the egg yolk batter till batter becomes uniform and continue to fold in the remaining whites.
• Pour batter into chiffon pan. Bake in pre-heated oven at 170 degC for 45 mins or until the cake surface turns golden brown, and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
• Remove from the oven and invert the pan immediately. Cool completely and then unmold the cake.

Orange Chiffon Cake

In the weekends, DH came home with a carton of fruits... I took a peep and found many oranges in there! I'm not exactly a fan of oranges, probably had an overdose of it when I was younger, which was why I stopped eating them. Orange juice and orange-processed sweets also do not interest me, so I have a hard time to find ways to use them up.

I finally decided to make an orange chiffon cake. And I had a brilliant idea of placing slices of oranges as the base of the chiffon cake mold, and when the cake was baked and overturned, it would be so nicely in place, very much like an upside down cake! I decided that the slices had to be very thin and light, so I went looking for the sharpest knife in the kitchen. Still I had lotsa problems getting the orange cut to thin slices. Sigh.... anyway, I tried my best and crossed my fingers.
brain fart

When the cake was done, I could not wait to unmold it, but I really had to wait for it to cool down. Finally when it was lukewarm, I decided to unmold and check if my idea worked. Lo and Behold... the top actually sank! Guess my orange slices were too heavy for the delicate chiffon. :( Oh well, I never knew until I tried... and I'm glad I did. It did look pretty.... if only the surface was flat and even. LOLz

Gula Melaka Chiffon Cake

I've been wanting to give this recipe a try and the CNY break was a good time to do it. The cake turned out really nice, soft and very fragrant! The original recipe called for 6 eggs, for a 22cm tin, but I decided to reduce it to 4 eggs to fit my heart-shaped chiffon tin. Here's the original recipe (with my 4 eggs recipe in brackets)... do try it!

What you need

• 150gm gula melaka (100gm)
• 100ml coconut milk (67gm)
• 6 egg yolks (4)
• 4 tbsp oil (2 1/2 tbsp)
• 1/4 tsp salt (1/8 tsp)
• 140gm plain flour (93gm)
• 6 egg whites (4)
• 1/4 tsp cream of tartar (1/8 tsp)
• 50gm castor sugar (33gm)

What to do

• Melt gula melaka in a pot with coconut milk over low heat. Set aside in mixing bowl.
• Combine egg yolks, cooking oil and salt into the melted gula melaka mix.
• Sift flour into egg yolk mix and whisk in.
• In another bowl, whip egg whites till foamy and add in cream of tartar. Then gradually add in castor sugar and whip till stiff peaks.
• Fold in 1/3 of the whipped egg whites into the egg yolk mix to lighten it. When combined, pour entire egg yolk mix into the remaining whipped egg whites. Gently fold in till the colour of the batter becomes uniform.
• Pour batter into cake tin and bake in preheated oven at 170 degrees for 30-40mins.
• Remove tin from oven, invert immediately and remove cake from tin when totally cooled.
  
  

Chiffon ..... again

Well, like Elyn said, since the heart-shaped chiffon mold is so expensive, we have to justify the buy by baking more chiffon cake!

So here's another chiffon cake by me. :P

This time, I wanted something really plain and simple. Looked through Kelvin Chai's Chiffon Cake is Done and settled on one of the recipes. But I wanted to have a tinge of strawberry taste to it, besides the vanilla flavour, so I took out 1/3 of the batter and added strawberry paste to it.

The final cake was really so soft and light! Mom even commented that it's like eating cotton wool. LOLz....

I love the soft colours and the pretty swirls.

I *heart* chiffon cakes

When I heard Elyn was getting those heart-shaped chiffon tins we often see in japanese websites, I just had to have one too! Thankfully she did help me get one and we discussed abt what kind of chiffon to bake using it. She did hers.... and here's mine, the chocolate version. :)

Elyn also passed me a gift, that goes along with the tin... a special spatula for removing chiffon cakes from tin... how considerate, especially when the price of the tin is not cheap for a cake tin. However, being the first time I'm using this spatula and Elyn's constant reminder that I have to be GENTLE, so that the tin is not scratched.... the cake when removed had jagged edges all round! (laughs)... but well, I'll improve.

I love how tall the cake is! and it's so airy and yummy too. Half the cake is now gone (into our tummies), since it was baked last nite. *yes, i just couldn't wait. Got the tin from her last evening on my way home and the cake was baked by 8.30pm... how's that for efficiency?? LOLz*

Honey Lemon Chiffon Cake

A friend forwarded this recipe for me to try. She loved the taste of this cake but felt that the cake did not rise enuf during baking. So it became my weekends assignment to give it a shot and report back to her how it turned out.Indeed it is a really lovely tasting cake! I used my good'ole 8in chiffon tin which turned out to be too big. The cake when baked only came up to slightly more than half the height of the tin... but it was so good, it was gone in half the day!

Sharing with you the pictures and the recipe of this cake. If I were to bake this again, I'll do 1.5 the recipe to get a good height.

What you need

• 3 nos.Egg Yolk
• 50gm Honey
• Zest of 1 lemon
• 2 tsp Lemon Juice
• 1 tbsp Water
• 45gm Corn Oil
• 85gm Cake Flour
• 4 nos. Egg White
• Pinch of Salt
• 50gm Sugar
• 1/8 tsp Cream of tartar or 1 tsp lemon juice

What to do

• Mix egg yolks, honey, lemon zest, lemon juice, water and corn oil tog. Sift in the cake flour. Mix till combined.
• Whip the egg whites with either cream of tartar or lemon juice, and sugar till wet stiff peaks.
• Fold in 1/3 of the egg whites into the yolk mixture to lighten it.
• Fold in remaining egg whites and pour batter into the chiffon tin.
• Bake for about 20 to 25 mins at 180C. Timing depends on oven.

Banana Chiffon Cake

Saw a bunch of bananas hanging in my mom's kitchen. So before I left her place, I went to pluck one off and made a chiffon cake with it. However, after looking thru' the recipe and some calculations, I realsied that the banana was not enough! Still I went ahead with it.... (but that's after scambling to the fridge, loooking for some choc chips, hoping to make up the difference with it! but I found NONE!!!! no chocolate chips in my kitchen!!!!! LOL)

The banana's not ripe enough, so the cake was not very fragrant. I underbaked the cake a little, 'coz I saw that the top was getting a little too brown for my liking. But it meant that the interior of the cake was very soft and nice! hehe

Pandan Chiffon Cake

I remembered my 1st time baking this cake and it turned out to be a total flop. The baked cake was so densed and collapsed that it tasted like kueh that had been left in the open for days, all hardened and flat! LOL.... At that time, I had no idea wad had gone wrong, until a few years later when I really went to read-up and ask ard for the proper way to make a chiffon cake.

Fast forward to many years later, I finally came to understand the "theory" and technique to create a good chiffon.

This is a pandan chiffon I baked in the weekends. I love making chiffon for the fast and minimal cleanup/washing up needed. The resulting texture is so light and airy that the family has no problems finishing it up. :)

I'm pretty pleased with this cake. It's tall and the structure's quite firm, the cake did not collapse at all and the sides are all nicely and evenly browned when I removed from the mold.

Cheese Chiffon Cake with Blueberries

Since the pandan chiffon was so well-recieved, i decided to bake another chiffon cake. This time I revisited the cheese chiffon cake recipe I had used b4 long ago. Decided to incorporate some blueberries into the cake so that the flavour will be stronger and blueberries complemented the cheese very well too. To make it more visually pleasing, I mixed in some violet colouring into half of the batter and swirl it.

The end results? The cake's airy but still very soft and moist. I think I'll need to tweak the recipe abit, maybe add in more flour so that the cake has a firmer structure. But overall, the tart blueberries provided a nice dimension to the cake.

Meet the GOLDEN GAL

This is a healthy chiffon cake. Low on sugar, only 2 egg yolks are used! ..... a diet cake maybe? hehe....

Presenting..... Golden Kiwi Chiffon cake

What you need

• 4 egg whites
• 20gm sugar (original recipe calls for 30gm sugar, i cut it down)
• 75gm cake flour
• 32gm warm water
• 30gm oil
• 95gm golden kiwi puree (green kiwi can be used too, but golden kiwi is sweeter)
• 2 egg yolks
• 30gm sugar

What to do

1. Sift cake flour and set aside. Preheat oven @180degrees.
2. Mix water, oil and kiwi puree together and set aside.
3. Beat egg yolks tog with 30gm sugar till thick. Combine mixture from step 2 (water, oil and puree) into egg yolk.
4. Fold in cake flour and set aside.
5. Beat egg whites with 20gm sugar till stiff.
6. Fold in 1/3 of whipped egg whites into batter to "lighten"it and then add in remaining egg whites. Fold in gently. Batter shd be thick.
7. Bake at 170degrees for 25-30mins. Invert mould immediately once removed from oven.