Today on Sugar Spun Run, I'll be showing you how to make a chiffon cake.
Hey Sugar Spun Bakers, Sam here,
and today I am so excited to be sharing another carefully tested, well-researched,
and perfected recipe.
Chiffon cake is a lot like angel food cake in a lot of ways.
It has a really tall, airy structure.
It's very soft, but this cake is going to be using both egg whites
and egg yolks, and there's also going to be oil in it, which you will
definitely not find in an angel food cake.
Now to get started, you'll want to pre-heat your oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit, and let's begin.
Alright, grab yourself a medium-sized bowl, and we're going to combine 2 and 1/4 cups of cake
flour, 1 and 1/4 cups of granulated sugar, with 2 teaspoons of baking powder,
and 1 teaspoon of salt—got some cream of tartar here.
We don't need that just yet. That's
for our egg whites. We’ll just whisk these ingredients together until everything is well combined,
and set this aside. Okay, the next thing you need is your eggs. Before we go
any further, we're going to separate our eggs. You need 6
large eggs total, and ideally they should be at room temperature.
We are going to separate the whites and the yolks.
Now the easiest way I've found to do this is just to crack
the egg and pass the yolk back and forth from one half of the shell to the other,
until that white drops out. Drop my yolk right there.
Now whenever you are dealing with egg whites, you always want
to make sure that you don't get any grease,
or any oil, or any yolk in with the egg white.
So, I like to grab a separate dish.
And now, my next white, I'm going to crack in a new bowl.
That way if I happen to get any yolk in here, I've only ruined one egg white and not both of them.
Okay, so this is exactly why I am using two separate bowls for my egg whites.
If I'd gotten this yolk in with all of the other ones, I’d have to toss out
all of my egg whites. Right now, we just have to toss out this one.
Okay, I have my 6 egg whites and 6 egg yolks. I’m just going to set the whites aside for now,
and I'm going to pour these yolks into a separate bowl,
a larger bowl. This recipe does dirty quite a few dishes.
Now along with the eggs, I'm going to add 1/2 cup of either canola or vegetable oil,
any neutral cooking oil, 2 Teaspoons of vanilla extract, just 1/4 teaspoon of almond extract—
this is optional, but I really love the flavor it adds—
and I'm also going to be adding one cup of orange juice.
I love using orange juice. It gives a really nice light citrus flavor to the cake,
but if you don't like that flavor yourself, you could use milk, or even water,
instead. I talk a little bit more in the blog post about why I like to use orange juice
and what kind of results you’ll get if you use the any of the different options instead.
Alright, we'll just whisk these together pretty vigorously
until all of our ingredients are well combined,
and this mixture is nice and smooth. You want to make sure you break up all of those egg yolks
and that the orange juice and oil are completely combined.
So once this is nice and smooth, we can grab our flour mixture
and just add this right into the bowl.
We're going to want to stir it, until the ingredients are nice and smooth.
I usually just start by folding everything together with a spatula to get the flour all moistened.
And then I switch back to my whisk, and just whisk everything until the batter is nice and smooth.
Alright, set this aside, and now grab yourself another bowl
because we're going to be whipping our egg whites. Now,
you want to use a large mixing bowl
that is completely clean, completely dry, and completely grease
free. Otherwise, your egg whites are not going to whip properly.
Now, I also have a couple other ingredients. Here's my cream of tartar that I had out earlier.
And I also have one cup of—I’m sorry—
1/2 cup of granulated sugar
that I'll be using. Don't need that just yet,
but for now I'm just going to combine the egg whites and 1/2 teaspoon of cream of tartar.
Okay, for this part, you really don't want to do it by hand or it's going to take you forever.
I highly recommend you grab yourself an electric mixer or you can use a stand mixer—
that would be even better.
And we are going to start by beating the egg whites and cream of tartar until the mixture is foamy.
Alright, so I'm going to increase my mixer speed to high at this point.
And this is a pretty powerful mixer, so it always seems like it's on high,
and I'm going to start adding my sugar.
Now, I'm just going to add about 1 to 2 tablespoons at a time.
And then I'm going to mix for about 15 seconds after each addition.
And I'm just going to keep doing this until I've added all of my sugar.
Once you've added all of your sugar, don't think that you're done.
So this mixture is still very,
very soft. It's increased in volume some,
but we are going for stiff peaks—like very, super stiff peaks—
so we are just going to keep mixing on high speed until we get there.
So right here, I think we are just about at stiff peaks.
I don't know if you can see the peaks on the mixer.
Let's take a look with the spatula,
so you can see just how thick and fluffy that is. I actually want to go just a little bit further.
You can possibly over mix your egg whites, so you always want to make sure you don't go too far,
but it's so important that your egg whites be whipped completely to fully stiff peaks.
Just another couple seconds should do it. Okay,
I am happy with how this looks,
so now I'm going to get my egg yolk and flour mixture from earlier, and I'm going to add this in
with my egg whites. Don't use your electric mixer anymore at this point
because there's a really real risk of accidentally over mixing this mixture
and deflating those egg whites,
so I'm just going to be using a spatula, and I'm going to fold together these two different batters.
And I'm just going to do it gently. I'm scraping the sides.
I'm scraping the bottom of the bowl. And I want to ultimately have a smooth, cohesive batter.
I don't want to be too rough with it. Okay,
now the next thing that you need for today's recipe is a tube pan.
I have one that has a removable bottom.
They make some that don't. It's fine if yours is not removable,
but I highly recommend grabbing one of these because it just makes removing the cake so much easier.
Now, whatever you do do not grease
this pan. We are just going to pour our batter directly into the pan.
And it does a pretty good job of distributing itself
evenly, but I do like to take my spatula and just make sure the top is nice and even. Alright,
we'll take this over to our preheated oven where we're going to bake it in the center rack
for about 50 to 55 minutes.
When it is finished baking, the top should be a nice, golden brown.
And if you touch the top of the cake,
it should lightly springback. It shouldn't just deflate. Any cracks
that are on the surface of the cake should appear
dry and not wet.
Now, just like an angel food cake, this cake needs to be inverted,
so you can use either a bottle
or a can—I'm just using a can—and we are going to carefully invert the cake
onto the can. And this part always makes me super nervous.
Perfect! It didn't fall out, so we are all good.
Usually if your cake falls out, it usually indicates
there was an issue with your egg whites or it might not have been baked long enough.
Now, we are going to let this cake sit until it has cooled completely.
It should not even feel a little bit warm to the touch.
Now once your cake has cooled completely, we can remove it from the tube pan.
We're going to put it right side up again.
And you always want to grab a butter knife
or something, and just gently loosen it from the sides of the pan.
I also like to just loosen it from the center too, just
so it doesn't stick there when I go to flip it over.
And here's why I love this removable bottom
because I can just lift that cake up, and before I flip it,
I'm also going to use my knife just to gently loosen it from the bottom of the pan as well.
And now you can invert it onto your cake platter. Alright,
this cake can be served as is, some people like to dust it with powdered sugar,
those are both great options,
but I personally have a citrus-infused glaze that I like to put on top of the cake.
Now, this is super simple to make. All you are going to need is one stick of salted butter.
This is eight tablespoons,
or 1/2 cup. And this butter is already super soft but I'm going to cut it into pieces.
And I'm just going to pop this in the microwave until it's completely melted.
Once it's melted, we'll add 2 and 1/4 cups of powdered sugar.
And we'll just whisk these together,
and you're going to see pretty quickly that you need a little bit more liquid to make this
nice and smooth.
Now, because I am making a citrus-infused cake,
I'm going to be using orange juice, and using this to help flavor,
and to thin the icing. If you don't want to use orange juice,
you can use water or milk instead.
Now, I find that this usually takes about two to four tablespoons of orange juice.
I’m just going to add about 2 tablespoons to start.
And I'm just going to keep adding orange juice
until I have a nice, smooth liquid, and I want to show you what it should look like.
If I lift up my whisk, you see how it drizzles down very evenly?
You can make it even thinner than this. This is about the consistency where I like to stop
though. All that is left to do is just spoon this over your cake.
If you make your glaze thinner, it'll go over a lot smoother and nicer, but, like I said,
I like the slightly richer, thicker topping. Now
this glaze sets pretty quickly,
and in a perfect world, you would wait for it to set before you dig in,
but, those of you who are familiar with this channel
know, I do not have that kind of patience. So we are going to just dig right in. Now,
just like with an angel food cake, you want to use a sharp, serrated knife to cut into this cake.
And we are going to saw into it. You don't want to use a knife and just press down,
you will just squish that cake.
And that is how you make chiffon cake at home, from scratch.
I hope you guys enjoy today's recipe. I really think you're going to love this
one, and if you try it out,
please let me know what you think. Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you next time.
It’s so good.