Bánh bông lan rất xốp và mềm (Cottony-soft chiffon cake)

Ah! Asian bakers, and our never ending quest for softer, almost cottony-like cake!

With this recipe, I think we have come very close to that perfect chiffon cake. Almost perfect (see below).

The secret to the cottony-soft chiffon cake is in the method. If you take note of the ingredients, the proportion of liquid (oil + milk) is higher than other recipes, and the amount of flour is much less. These changes help to improve the texture of the crumbs, making it soft and moist.

To increase the amount of liquid in the cake, a trick is used – making a roux of flour and all the wet ingredients instead of just mixing them together like normal recipe. This additional step enables larger absorption of liquid, hence, a softer cake as a result. (The method is not new. The water roux approach to bread making has been very popular among home bakers. Most vow that it helps to produce much softer bread – see here.)

So, how does this cake fair? Well, it is undoubtedly the softest and yummiest chiffon cake I have made. It is moist and has that creamy taste resembling the popular Japanese cottony cheesecake (without any dairy!). Light-as-air, and I really mean it. The cake stays soft until the second day - we finish it rather quick!

The drawback? With a higher amount of moisture, the cake is quite hard to handle. I used the chiffon mould, and it sort of collapse a bit after taking out of the tin (this hardly happened with the normal chiffon cake – but then I forgot to raise the oven temperature properly prior to cooking, which might affect the result. Also, my kitchen was really cold at the time, too). Because of the soufflé-like texture, don’t bother to decorate the cake. It will collapse, most likely. Thankfully, the cake is lovely enough by itself, with a bit of whipped cream or fabulous wholefat yoghurt.

I will experiment with the new method a bit more later. ;)

Cottony-soft chiffon cake

Based on a Chinese recipe. I’ve changed it a bit to add more flavors to the cake (the original would yield a too eggy cake IMO). But the technique stays the same.

Ingredients

60g plain flour
55g fresh milk
50g corn oil
20g sugar

5 egg yolk

1 tbp vanilla paste
Zest of 2 lemon

5 egg whites
60g sugar (extra)
A pinch of cream of tartar (optional)

* make sure all the ingrdients are at room temp.

Method

(1) Preheat oven to 165C

(2) In a small pan, add milk, corn oil and 20g sugar, bring to the boil and remove from the heat. Constantly whisk them together

(3) Sift the flour into the milk mixture, stirring constantly to form a soft paste. (See pic) - When the mixture is lukewarm, add in the egg yolks and mix well. Stir in lemon zest and vanilla.

(4) In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites with cream of tartar until glossy. Slowly add in the sugar (60g), spoon by spoon until soft peak forms.

(5) Fold 1/3 of the egg white into the yolk-flour mixture to lighten the mixture. Then, gently fold the rest of the eggwhites into the yolk-flour mixture. be careful not to deflate the batter.

(6) Pour the batter into an ungreased tube pan. Bake for about 30-35 mins. {Make sure to check after 30 mins - Mine took quite quick to cook through). Test with a toothpick - it should come out clean when the cake is done.

(7) Take the cake out of the oven and invert the tin straightaway. Cool the cake in the pan completely.

(8) To release the cake: run a knife around the cake and gently release it from the tin (the cake might collapse a bit). Serve with cream or yoghurt.

*****
FEEDBACK:

+) This is the result from a Vietnamese baker who loved this recipe as much as I did! PIC (Link in Vietnamese, but just marvel the result ;))

+) Another factastic result - via yumsiilicious


http://www.anhsfoodblog.com/2010/07/cottony-soft-chiffon-cake-baking.html