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!