Lemon Orange Chiffon Cake

When I first started exploring baking chiffon cakes, I have heard many saying that it is not easy baking one, mainly because chiffon cakes require beating up a meringue and most meringue based bakes are often tricky (just like macarons!). Problems can range from short cakes to cake collapsing after cooling to cake falling out of tin prematurely. However I have discovered for myself that even the infamously reputed-hard-to-make macarons can be quite easy to make as long as you pay attention to some details during the making.


During that time, I pored through many online recipes from blogs and various home bakers and of course, it started with the signature Pandan Chiffon cake. I was not prepared to do the trial and error method because I was not ready to be demoralised by a failed bake. So I did lotsa reading up of recipes and reviews and put together a recipe that is the end product of cross referencing a few popular recipes. That was for the Pandan Chiffon but today I'm going to share one that is citrusy. I mean you can't be eating Pandan Chiffon all the time right? So I did the same way of cross referencing a few recipes and "combining" the Yuzu Chiffon from DeQueenKitchen and the Orange Chiffon from My Baking Cottage, I came up with the following: Lemon Orange Chiffon cake.

Lemon Orange chiffon cake

Makes a 17cm chiffon cake tin


Ingredients:
- 4 egg yolks
- 10gm caster sugar¹
- 40ml corn oil
- 30ml fresh lemon juice
- 30ml fresh orange juice²
- 0.5 tsp lemon extract
- 0.5 tsp orange extract
- 1 tbsp lemon/orange zest (optional)
- 60gm cake flour
- 10gm corn flour
- 0.25 tsp fine sea salt


For the meringue:
- 4 egg whites
- 50gm caster sugar


Method:

1. Preheat oven to 160C (non fan).

2. Put yolks and 10gm caster sugar into a big mixing bowl and whisk until the mixture is light in color and fluffy.



Add yolks and 10gm caster sugar together.

Whisk egg yolks and sugar till light and fluffy.

3. Add in the corn oil and whisk to get a homogeneous mixture.

4. Add in the juices, extracts and zest if preferred. I didn't put any zest for this particular entry.

5. Sift the cake flour, corn flour and salt together into the yolk mixture. Mix evenly with a balloon whisk.

Add in the dry ingredients.

6. Using a clean mixer bowl and whisk, whip the egg whites until big foamy bubbles appear. Gradually add in the 50gm caster sugar as the whipping continues.

7. Whip until the egg whites about to reach the stiff peak stage. It took me about 4-5 min on my Kenwood Chef speed #4 to reach this stage.

Whip egg whites and the remaining sugar till it is about to reach stiff peak.

8. Scoop a small portion of the meringue and add into the yolk mixture, fold gently with a spatula to get an even mixture.

Adding in a small portion of meringue before adding the rest will ensure that the mixture will be able to combine easily.

9. Add in the rest of the meringue and fold gently to get even mixture.

10. Pour into an ungreased chiffon cake tin and slam the tin (Hold the sides of the tin with your fingers and with your thumbs pressing down on the centre piece firmly) and slam the tin a couple of times on the countertop to release any big bubbles. Bake for 40min.

Remember to slam the tin a couple of times on the countertop to release any trapped big bubbles in the batter.

11. Cool the cake completely in tin upside down.

12. Unmould the cake by hand.³

Unmoulding the chiffon cake by hand will give you a pretty cake! 

 

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Notes:

1. This recipe is not very sweet, partly because I added in fresh lemon juice. If you have a sweet tooth, you might want to add 10-20gm more of caster sugar to the yolk mixture or alternatively, reduce the proportion of lemon juice and add more of the sweeter orange juice.

2. For this entry, I used Peel Fresh orange juice because I didn't have fresh oranges with me.

3. I always unmould my chiffon cakes by hand and not using a spatula or knife because that is the only way to get a nice non blotchy "skinless" chiffon cake. Please refer to this YouTube video on how to unmould by hand. The key is to be bold about it. If your chiffon cake is fully cooked, it should be springy and spongy enough for you to unmould it easily by hand. Have fun!

Chinese Roast Pork (Sio Bak) using (mainly) airfryer

Today I did the chinese roast pork AKA sio bak again. I did this a couple of times before using both airfryer and oven and I must say it did fluster me quite a bit when I had to keep adjusting timing and temperature settings during the cooking in order to get the nice bubbling crackling going. Well, it could be I tried to adjust too many things during cooking or I didn't really take note of the details I did, that probably ended up me still feeling clueless and apprehensive when I was making this today again.
 

So this time round, I made it a point to note down all the details I did. It was a success! Or maybe I should say 80% success since I definitely overcooked my first piece of pork but it was (luckily!) still juicy and nice, though the appearance could have been much better. My second piece was much better. So here I am, sharing with you in details of what I did. :)

My pork belly with beautiful crackling!



Recipe adapted from: Table for 2 ... or More

 

Ingredients:
- 1 kg pork belly, skin on
-  ⅓- ½ tbsp¹ fine sea salt
- 1 tbsp rice vinegar 
 

Marinade:
- 1 tsp white pepper
- 1 tsp fine sea salt
- 1 clove garlic
- 1 tsp chinese 5 spice
- 2 tsp fermented beancurd
- 2 tsp Shao Xing wine

Mix the marinade ingredients together except for the salt and garlic.



Mince the garlic with the salt in the marinade before adding into the marinade.

Method:

 

1. Mince garlic with a bit of the salt in the marinade.
 

2. Mix with other ingredients in the marinade.
 

3. Cut the 1 kg pork belly into 2 pcs. (else that 1 kg won't fit into the smaller airfryer basket!). You can slice it into half at this point or before airfrying. It does not really make a huge difference. I did mine before airfrying.²
 

4. Wash and rinse pork belly well. Pat dry.
 

5. Lay the pork belly in a glass dish with meat part facing up.
 

6. Rub the marinade seasoning unto the meat part, including the sides.


Rub the marinade seasoning unto the meaty part of the pork belly.

 



7. Turn the pork belly over to have skin face up. Pat the skin dry.

 

8. Poke as many holes as possible in the skin. Use the proper tool for this.³

This is the tool that I use for poking the pork skin. It is about the size of an ice pick and I got it at ToTT.

 

Pat the skin dry. Poke as many holes as possible. This was how my 1 kg looked like.

 

 

Rub the salt into the skin. Pat dry again.



9. Rub the salt vigorously unto the skin only. Pat dry any moisture from the skin.

 

10. Chill the marinaded pork uncovered, skin side up, in fridge for 1-2 nights.
 

11. On the day of cooking, bring the pork belly out of fridge 30min in advance to bring to room temp.
Pat dry the skin of any condensation from time to time. If you have not cut your 1kg pork belly into 2 pieces yet, this is the time to do it.
 

12. Preheat air fryer to 180C, airfry pork belly for 15min.

This was how 1/2 of the 1kg pork belly looked like after 15 min of 180C airfrying.

 

13. Brush rice vinegar on pork skin.

 

14. Change airfryer temperature to 200C and airfry for another 15min.



The same pork belly after the additional 15min of airfrying at 200C.

15. Meanwhile during the second half of the airfrying, preheat the oven to 240C.⁴

 

16. Remove from airfryer and put the pork belly in middle rack of oven and grill with fan at 230-240C for 1-2 min until the crackling appears to your satisfaction. Be watchful as it can burn very fast! Remove from oven immediately when crackling is done.

This was after oven grilling. Look at the difference in crackling before and after oven grilling!

 

Beautiful crackling and yet juicy meaty part!

17. Repeat the same process with the second piece.

 

18. Allow the meat to rest for minimum 15min before cutting.⁵

See how juicy the interior is! Yum!

 

Notes:

 

1. I used 1 tbsp of salt to rub on 1 kg of pork belly and then I realised it was too much so I scooped off some before I rubbed the salt in. Even though the salt was much lesser, my family still commented the skin could do with lesser salt, so 1/3-1/2 tbsp of salt should be sufficient, so long as it is enough to rub the whole surface area of the skin.

2. I was too greedy and asked the butcher to give me 1 kg of pork belly and I only found out when I was about to airfry it that that piece of pork can't fit into my Philips 1st gen airfyer! LOL! I had to cut into 2 pcs to fit in. Hence you will see that the above recipe seems a bit weird that I cooked 2x pork belly.

3. It is very important that you use the proper piercing tool for poking the skin. Uncooked pork skin is very tough! I tried using a short metal skewer in previous times to poke the skin; My take is don't bother. Go get the correct tool for this job and save yourself the aches.

4. I use the oven for the last few min of cooking because I find that the airfryer can't give me the perfect bubbly crackling I want, despite being set at max 200C. Hence I use the oven grill setting to achieve that. You can skip this grilling if you are satisfied with the crackling the airfryer gives you. For me, I find this final step is crucial in achieving the perfect crackling. Do take note that because the oven grill setting is EXTREMELY hot, I only preheat my oven to 240C using normal (NON-GRILL) setting and then just before I put the pork into oven, change the setting to grill (with fan on) setting.

5. Allowing the pork belly to rest for 15 min or longer after cooking will ensure that the meat remains juicy and moist. If you cut it while it is still hot, the juices will flow out of it rendering the meat tough and dry after cooling.

 

Crumbly Butter Cookies

Recently I have been so busy and tired (read: lazy) that I haven't been doing any serious baking. Not to mention trying new bakes. So in a bid to use up my expiring ingredients and to get my butt moving, I decided to do some simple bakes: butter cookies.

 

 

I have baked butter cookies previously and the 1st recipe I came to love is one from my SIL. I don't know where she got it from because she also can't remember but it was most likely from some show or the Internet. I loved the cut and shaped ones my SIL made but the problem I encountered back then was my cookies are often too crumbly to handle so it is quite a mess to eat them. Hers are not like that and we didn't know why. Later I kind of figured out that I might have to knead them a bit longer to get the gluten forming and hence holding the cookie together after baking. In any case this is not very relevant today because I have modified her method to one that suits the lazy me today.

 

Here's the recipe:

crumbly buttery cookies

cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy

 

Ingredients:
- 250gm unsalted butter, softened
- 90gm caster sugar
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 350gm plain flour
- 1/4 tsp fine sea salt

 

Flatten the dough slightly into a disc

 

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 175C (fan forced).
2. Cream softened butter and sugar till light and fluffy.
3. Add yolk and extract (I also added in a bit of vanilla paste today because I had some bits left in the bottle). Mix well.
4. Sift flour and salt into butter mixture in 2-3 additions. Fold in between each addition. Give it a quick mix at the lowest speed to ensure dough is mixed evenly. If you prefer a cookie that holds its shape well and not too crumbly, mix it a few sec more.
5. Scoop the dough using a cookie scoop (size 70) onto lined baking trays. Flatten slightly with a spatula or your hand.
6. Bake for 12-15min or until edges of cookies are slightly browned. Cool completely before storing.