IMBB 8 – Part I: Two “Spirited” Chiffon Sisters

Random food ideas sometimes have a funny way of creeping – unannounced and most often uninvited – into my consciousness. And very often, once there, they refuse to leave until I get off my derriere and do something active about them – in the kitchen; creating whatever entity it is that has been preoccupying my mind. Occasionally, these ad hoc “inspirations” (if you can call them that) feel like insidious invasions; they can be triggered by the most innocent of stimuli, and yet, once happily ensconced within the recesses of my mind, they simply will not budge until I bring them to life in the physical dimension.

Take for instance my recent bout of “preoccupation” with chiffon cakes. It started with a grocery buying trip to Carrefour hypermarket. I happened to stroll past the rack displaying rows and rows of pandan chiffon cakes. The huge sign above them screamed their special offer price of only $2.99 (US$1.75) for one whole cake. Sub-consciously, I mused: why is it that chiffon cakes in this part of the world are almost invariably pandan-flavored? I mean, they are ubiquitous in all the supermarkets and bakeries. They all look the same, taste pretty much the same, and in all likelihood all come from the same one (or maybe two) factories. The most exciting that life gets for a chiffon cake here is perhaps to be flavored in chocolate rather than pandan!

And that was the simple trigger that set off a whole chain of baking activity. Once started, the thoughts on chiffon cakes could not be stemmed. Even as I continued to place items into my shopping cart, my mind stayed resolutely on chiffon cakes. I’ve never made a chiffon cake before. Would you believe? Decades ago, in the time before commercially available chiffon cakes, my mum used to bake them quite regularly – also in the pandan flavor. But it has been literally decades since I’ve last eaten a home-made chiffon cake (I mean, at only a few dollars for a whole cake in the shops, few can be bothered to heat up the oven and make one from scratch). I’ve even forgotten what a “true” chiffon cake tastes like – my only active memories are of not-terribly-exciting, hardly-very-tasty commercial ones. Hmmmm… maybe… maybe I should try my hand at making a chiffon cake. Maybe I can jazz it up a little, and give it a more exciting spin…

The thought would not go away. The only way to appease it and put it to rest was to get into the kitchen and make that chiffon cake.

So out came my mum’s treasured 30-year-old recipe notebook. As I flipped through the carefully handwritten pages, I came across several chiffon cake recipes. On the whole, there were little differences between them – some called for a couple more eggs, while others had slight variations to the method for mixing the batter. I kind of picked several ideas from here, a couple more from there, and settled on a recipe that I felt I wanted to try.

After the basic recipe had been decided upon, I became quite taken with the idea of using nuts or at least the flavor of nuts in the cake. I wondered why chiffon cakes were never (not that I’ve seen at least) made with nuts. I would have thought nuts would add a delicious fragrance to the cake. Yep. That was it. I was going to try to make an almond flavored chiffon cake. However, in order to keep the texture light, I didn’t want to add nuts (ground or otherwise) into the cake batter itself. Almond essence as flavoring didn’t seem ideal either ; I sometimes found it to be too obvious and jarring. Then it struck me: why not liven things up a bit at the same time, and push the envelope even further - I could use amaretto in the batter (and maybe only sprinkle almond slices on the top of the cake). Now, I had never seen a boozy chiffon cake before, so I wasn’t sure what effect, if any, the alcohol would have on the texture of the batter. But it sounded exciting enough to give it a shot.

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Before we get to the cake though, let’s talk about the chiffon cake pan (which, if I’m not wrong is identical to what is known as the angel food pan in the US).

This is a very deep (oh, maybe about 6 to 8 inches tall) cake pan, with a removable bottom that has a tall, hollow tube – or “chimney” as I called it when I was a little girl! – extending from the center.

Now, the traditionalists will tell you that chiffon cakes cannot be baked in anything other than a chiffon cake pan. I guess it’s similar to traditionalists in the West saying that angel food cakes can only be baked in an angel food pan. [Here’s a stray thought : the angel food cake and the chiffon cakes are close cousins, in my belief. But while the angel food cake is ubiquitous in the US, it’s rarely found or used here. And if I’m not wrong, the chiffon cake is not that common in the US. Or, perhaps more accurately, what is known as “chiffon cake” in the US and Europe seems, to me, to be quite different from what we know as “chiffon cake” here in Asia. I guess the “Asian chiffon cake”, if you will, is our version of the angel food cake – albeit with egg yolks and a touch of oil in it; whereas, the chiffon cake that is more common in the West seems to be an enriched sponge cake (maybe someone can confirm or correct me on this), which is almost always used in layer cakes and such like, and is hardly ever eaten on its own; unlike the Asian chiffon which is almost always eaten as is. Okay, sorry… miscreant, long-winded thoughts are now back under control… let’s move on.]

As for which cake pans to use or not use, my personal stand is that I think chiffon (and angel food cakes for that matter) can be baked in regular pans – only that the texture of the cake may be somewhat different, for the simple reason of the difference in heat distribution (and also the cooking time). My choice of pan will really depend on what I intend to do with the chiffon cake. If I am using the chiffon as a cake base for a filled or layered cake, or for a roulade, the regular cake pans are the natural choice. But if I want to eat the chiffon cake as is, and really want to savor that cloud-like fluffy lightness that is unique to the chiffon, I think it will have to be the chiffon cake pan.

Here’s an important tip for using the chiffon cake pan: do not line, grease or flour the pan – the cake batter should be poured into a completely dry pan. Why? Well, apparently, the chiffon cake has to be cooled in a very specific way as soon as it comes out of the oven. All my mum’s recipes have this instruction highlighted and marked for special attention. And in past conversations with aunts and friends of my mum’s, they have all mentioned this “required” cake-cooling quirk.

The cake pan, fresh out of the oven, has to be immediately inverted over a bottle, and left there, sitting upside-down, until the cake has completely cooled. My mum even jotted in the margin of one of her recipes : ideally, there should be about 4-5 inches of space between the cake pan and the counter top, to allow for maximum circulation of air!

Cooling the cake in this manner prevents the cake from sinking back onto itself as it sits in the pan. “Hanging” it upside-down ensures a truly fluffy, melt-in-the-mouth, tender crumb.

And if a totally ungreased, unfloured and unlined pan is used, the cake will stay in the pan until it has cooled completely, and will not decide to make a premature exit and do a belly flop onto the table!

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For the amaretto chiffon, I simply tweaked the basic recipe (which follows at the end of the post) a little:

• Half the amount of water was replaced with an equal volume of amaretto (almond flavored liqueur).

• Instead of using cooking oil, I decided to use melted reduced fat margarine instead.

• The sugar was reduced from the stipulated 8oz (225g or 1c) in the recipe to 5oz. [For some reason, on the spur of the moment, I – uncharacteristically – decided to drastically cut the amount of sugar. While I’m not one for throat-scratchingly sweet cakes and desserts, I’m also not one to hastily cut the sugar quantities in recipes; I do believe a degree of sweetness is required for cakes and desserts to be palatable. Anyway, to cut a long story short, on impulse, I decided 1 cup of sugar was a little excessive and cut it to just 5/8 cup. This was a mistake, as you will see later.]

• Finally, about 30g of sliced blanched almonds were sprinkled over the batter just before it went into the oven.

The results pleased me in many ways, but were also a little disappointing in a couple of respects.

What I found quite stunning was the wonderfully fine-crumbed texture of the cake…

It was pillowy soft ; fluffy with an almost melt-in-the-mouth feel to it. The weave of the crumb was delicate and finely meshed, with no major holes. Really quite gorgeous. I had forgotten what a “real” chiffon cake felt like on the palate; so used was I to the somewhat coarser and drier textures of the store-bought versions.

While the texture was absolutely pleasurable, there were, however, a couple of let-downs in the taste department.

It was a major mistake to have cut the sugar at all, let alone by so much. The cake had almost no sweetness to it, and as such left a rather nasty, almost metallic-like bland after-taste in the mouth, which lingered long after the cake had been eaten and digested. Not pleasant at all. Everyone complained about the lack of sweetness and that awful aftertaste. Lesson learnt – do not willfully wield the knife, so to speak, where sugar amounts are concerned. As my mum is forever telling me: it’s a cake; it’s meant to have some degree of sweetness to it. Well, consider me sufficiently chastised.

I ended up plonking the cake into the fridge, knowing that, if eaten chilled, what little sweetness that was there would be somewhat highlighted and enhanced. So we ended up eating the cake like bread really – spread with some fruit preserves, or for me, with some Nutella.

What thrilled me though was how well the texture held up even after the cake had been chilled. I ate many pieces (often several pieces at one go) straight out of the fridge (I didn’t even bother to pop them into the toaster), and the texture, even when cold, was still dreamily soft, tender and fluffy. Amazing!

The other let-down in taste was the amaretto. It was too subtle; barely discernible after the baking. Although the flavors were slightly intensified with refrigeration, the liqueur was still too much of an indistinct background note, as opposed to being the central flavor anchor, as I had originally intended. I should have replaced all the liquids with amaretto instead.

I had also forgotten to add the vanilla (I only realized the omission just as I was putting the cake into the oven). I think the vanilla, had I remembered to include it, would have helped pull the almond flavors and the sweetness together a little better.

So, overall, the cake was a little hit-and-miss: stupendously good in some ways, and quite a dismal let-down in others.

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Now, coincidentally enough, on the very day I made this amaretto chiffon cake - some two weeks ago - I found out that the theme for this month’s IMBB was food with wine or spirits in them. How uncanny, I thought. And what a perfect excuse to make another liqueur-infused chiffon cake, and to further fine-tune my chiffon recipe.

So, a few days later, in spite of protestations from the family, wary as they were of another bland chiffon outing, I was back in the kitchen, baking my second chiffon cake.

I’m not one for repetition and monotony in the kitchen; nothing bores me more than having to make the exact same recipe again, especially so soon after the last time I made it. I can never resist the urge to tweak, to play with the flavors, to experiment and to just have some fun with the food.

I just couldn’t bring myself to make another amaretto chiffon cake. A quick rummage through the liqueur cabinet revealed a forgotten and neglected half bottle of kahlua. Who knows how long it had been sitting there, abandoned after some dinner party, no longer desired or wanted. And that brought on the proverbial “light bulb blinking furiously” moment. A kahlua chiffon cake! Now, wouldn’t that be something?

Still using the same basic recipe but with the following adjustments:

• The full volume of liquids in the recipe was replaced with kahlua. I also dissolved about 2 teaspoons of instant coffee powder into the liqueur, just to intensify the coffee flavors a little more.

• I remembered to add the vanilla!

• Just out of curiosity, this time I used cooking oil, as per my mum’s original recipe, instead of melted margarine/butter – I wanted to see if this would affect the cake in any way.

• The sugar levels were restored to 1 cup or 225g.

• I decided to fold in some finely grated unsweetened 75% dark chocolate, with two purposes in mind : to help bring out, lift and round out the coffee flavors even more, and also to create a nice speckled effect in the cake.

• Oh, and one more thing. I was slightly unhappy with the few cracks that had surfaced in the amaretto cake (see top picture). They were nothing major, but I was feeling finicky. So, I thought I would try the good old “towel trick” on the chiffon cake. Would it work as well with a tube pan as it did with loaf pans?

Everything went well – up until it came time to cool the cake. As I turned the cake pan onto the bottle, I suddenly felt a lot less secure and confident than I had done with the amaretto cake. I thought to myself silently: please don’t fall out. And barely had the thought crossed my mind, the cake did the unthinkable… it made a majestic flop, out of the cake pan, onto the counter top! My jaw followed suit just as quickly.

Picking my chin off the counter and remembering to breathe again, I hastily attempted to turn the still steaming hot cake onto a wire rack, all the time muttering in exasperation to the cake: “you really didn’t have to listen to me and do exactly as I said this time, you know - I would have been quite happy for you to disobey just this once”. Fortunately for me, it seemed that I was the only one who suffered a horrific sinking feeling ; whilst my heart sank to the pit of my stomach, the cake, on the other hand, remained proudly tall and firm. Thank goodness!

The only tell-tale sign of its quick escape from the confines of the cake pan was the two deep imprints left by the spatulas I used to lift the finger-burningly hot cake off the counter top and onto the wire rack. Well, at least there were no cracks in the surface of the cake. That was what I wanted, wasn’t it? Ah! The joy in seeking the little blessings in life!

This kahlua chiffon was an improvement on the amaretto in several ways, but lost out a touch to the latter in other ways.

I really liked the crust on this one – gorgeously golden brown with just the right amount of thickness and crustiness to it; I had found the amaretto crust a little “under-developed”.

The flavors were also wonderfully well-developed; highly redolent of the kahlua, which was nicely rounded out by the chocolate. The aromas were quite hypnotizing. Even as the cake was baking, it smelt like I had freshly brewed coffee in the oven!

And this time, the sweetness was just right.

The speckled effect created by the chocolate was as pretty as I had imagined it would be – especially against the soothing café latte colored backdrop of the cake. (I of course had to choose one of the least speckled piece of cake to take a shot of!)

There were two things I was less enthusiastic about. First, the texture of the cake. Don’t get me wrong – the cake still had a wonderfully refined crumb, with a soft, fluffy bite. But I just couldn’t help noticing that the texture was just a touch rougher than the exquisitely smooth amaretto cake. The rest of the family didn’t notice it, but it seemed distinctly different to me. Perhaps you can see it too – comparing the above picture with the ones of the amaretto chiffon. And I think this variation was due entirely to the use of cooking oil rather than melted butter (or even melted low fat margarine).

I was truly surprised at the distinct difference such a small change in the recipe would bring to the texture. Who would have thought. A quick check with one of my baking cookbooks confirmed that the choice of fat (between oil and melted butter) did indeed impact the resultant texture. This made me wonder why all the chiffon cake recipes that I have ever seen called for cooking oil to be used. Perhaps it just seemed a lot more convenient to measure out 2 tablespoons of oil rather than to have to melt and cool the butter.

Whether this difference in texture applies to all sorts of cakes, or just to chiffon cakes I do not know.

Finally, the second revelation I got from this cake was that the “towel trick” was a definite no-no where chiffon cakes were concerned. Not only did it prevent the cake from obediently staying in the pan until it was cooled, but it also produced a very nasty tacky, pappy feel to the outer rim of the cake – the side of the cake that was in contact with the towel-wrapped side of the cake pan. It was quite awful, and we had to trim off all the sides to make the cake feel good both in the hand and mouth.

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So, two “spirited” chiffon cakes later, I have had mixed results – I adored the texture of the amaretto one, but loved the flavors of the kahlua sister. Hopefully, it’ll be third time lucky for me, where chiffon cakes are concerned at least… maybe, just maybe, by then, I’ll have an all-round winner on my hands.

And now, finally, we’ve come to the recipe. Thank you for your patience in staying with me and reading this far!

Without much further ado, here it is…

Basic Chiffon Cake

6 oz (170g or a scant 1½ cups) Softasilk cake flour *
1½ teaspoons baking powder
6 large egg yolks
8 oz (225g or 1 cup) caster sugar – divided
4 oz (120ml or ½ cup) water **
2 tablespoons (30g) butter – melted and cooled ***
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 large egg whites
½ teaspoon cream of tartar

* I used Top Flour (a superfine cake flour) instead, as that was what I had on hand, and it worked fine.

** Can be replaced with equal volume of liqueur or other forms of flavored liquids.

*** Reduced fat margarine also works well.

• Preheat oven to 175C.

• Combine the flour and baking powder. Sift three times. (I know, that is a heck of a lot of sifting; but the reward is really in the final texture of the cake – never mind what other cookbooks may say. Okay, if truly feeling lazy, you can get away with sifting twice.)

• With an electric mixer, beat together, at low speed, the egg yolks and half (it doesn’t have to be exact – an approximation will do) the sugar, until light and creamy (approximately 5 minutes or so).

• On low speed, mix in half the sifted flour.

• Add the liquids – the water/liqueur and the melted butter – and beat to combine.

• Add the rest of the flour, and mix in on low speed. The batter will be rather thick; almost like a stretchy, sticky dough. Set aside.

• Whisk the egg whites and the cream of tartar on medium-high speed until foamy. Slowly dribble in the reserved half cup of sugar and continue to whisk until the whites form glossy, firm but non-dry peaks.

• Fold the egg whites into the yolk batter. (It’s okay if you have to beat the first couple of batches of the meringue into the batter fairly vigorously – no harm will be done. Just be sure to gently fold in the rest, once the batter has lightened sufficiently.)

• Pour batter into an ungreased, unfloured and unlined chiffon cake pan. Smartly but gently tap the cake pan on the surface of the table, to release any trapped air bubbles.

• Bake in 175C oven for 40-45 minutes. Do not open the oven door during the cooking time (at least until the last few minutes or so). Immediately invert the cake pan over a bottle, and leave to cool completely before unmoulding.

Variations
Amaretto Chiffon – Replace water with equal volume of amaretto (almond-flavored liqueur). Sprinkle about 30g of sliced almonds on the surface of the batter before putting the cake into the oven.

Kahlua Chiffon – Replace water with equal volume of Kahlua (or Tia Maria – or any other coffee-flavored liqueur), and dissolve 2 teaspoons of dry instant coffee powder into the liqueur. Finely grate about 1½ oz (about 45g) of dark bitter or bittersweet chocolate, and fold into batter just before pouring into the cake pan.

Hazelnut Chiffon – Replace water with 3 oz (90ml) of a hazelnut-flavored liqueur, mixed with 2 tablespoons of Nutella. Some chopped hazelnuts can also be sprinkled over the batter before it goes into the oven.

Lemon / Lime / Orange Chiffon – Replace water with equal volume of the desired citrus juice. Alternatively, used a lemon or orange flavored liqueur. Fold in 2-3 tablespoons of the grated zest of the fruit.

Postscript
I’m still looking for a knock-me-down, drop-dead gorgeous chiffon cake recipe, so if you have a tried-and-tested one that you do not mind sharing, I would love to hear from you.
Thank you!

Copyright © 2004 Renee Kho. All Rights Reserved.
Please contact me for permission to copy, publish, distribute or display any of the images or text contained in this article.