Orange Chiffon Cake

Sometime last week, my mother-in-law came to visit bearing a basket full of home grown, organic free range eggs. They were from a family friend in Geelong. She also dropped the biggest hint that the person who gave us those eggs really REALLY love the pandan chiffon cake that I baked for them a couple of weeks back.

Since my post last month, I think I've created a Chiffon baking frenzy amongst my family and some friends. I had so many emails asking me about the Taiwanese cake flour that I used but forgot its name, using pandan paste/flavouring instead of pandan juice etc. I was invited to a friend's place for a baking demonstration: this friend of mine baked, not once but twice, in her last days of her pregnancy! (Today, she gave birth to a healthy baby girl! Congratulations darling!) Anyways, I digress.

I've been wanting to try out the Orange Chiffon Cake recipe from MyKitchenSnippets. This one calls for 6 eggs (white and yolk), instead of 9 whites and 7 yolks, and a quarter of a cup of oil, instead of half. Everything else is basically the same. So, less eggs and oil, wouldn't this cake be a lot healthier. Besides, I can bake two cakes with a carton of eggs, instead of having 2 egg yolks leftover all the time.

The cake turned out really well. Except, I put too much batter in my angel food pan it overflowed. Lachy said to me... err mom, I think there's too much cake in the oven! Anyways, it was still soft and squishy, with a lovely orangey aroma. When I folded the egg whites into the orange cake batter, I did not mix it through thoroughly enough. So there were twirls of orangey bits in the cake that looks deliberate and so I pretended that it was.

So here's the recipe from MyKitchenSnippets, and also here (after a few modifications) for my own record:

Ingredients :

(A)

225g Cake Flour (which I found out is a low gluten plain flour. It makes the cake fluffier)

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/8 tsp of salt

(B)

6 egg yolks

1/2 cup of castor sugar

3/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice

zest of 3 oranges (yes, I like mine with a punchful of orange!)

1/4 cup of vegetable oil

(C)

3/4 cup of sugar

6 egg whites

1 tsp of cream of tartar

Sift all ingredients in (A) into a large mixing bowl. Whisk in all ingredients in (B) and mix thoroughly until well blended. Set aside.

With a mixer, beat egg whites on high speed until frothy. Add in cream of tartar, and then sugar one tablespoon at a time. Beat until stiff peaks form.

Fold in egg white mixture into orange cake batter gently until well combined. Pour mixture into an ungreased angel food tin.

Bake in moderate oven (160 degrees) for an hour. Invert cake and cool it completely in the pan.

A slightly modified Pandan Chiffon Cake.

So after baking the Orange Chiffon Cake, I decided to try out a pandan flavoured chiffon, using the same recipe. So that means 3 less eggs and a quarter of a cup less oil. The outcome, quite nice, quite similar. But the one with 9 egg whites still takes the cake. A lot lighter, a little bit more sinful and when you put it close to your ears, it makes this squish squish sound (Is that a plus?). Still the perfect chiffon cake recipe. I don't know, maybe next time I'll try this version for the orange flavour.

Recipe here.