I don’t normally like cake. Almost all cakes look better than they taste, but not this
one. Earl Gray Chiffon cake might not look like much. I mean it’s overly big and kind
of clumsy looking. It has no layers. And it’s kind of ah - gray. But one bite and you’ll
understand what the fuss is about. The texture of this cake is so light and airy, it’s
hard to believe this cake can support its weight without collapsing. This light as a
cloud cake is punctuated by tea leaves and coated in the tea infused whipped cream. This
has been the official birthday cake of my family for about 15 years.
I stumbled on it at a tiny Japanese bakery in Boston. It was called Cafe Cakes. The genius
behind Cafe Cakes was Noriko Tamada. Although all her cakes were delicious, the earl gray
chiffon cake was out of this world. It was the first time in my life that I actually
wanted a cake for my birthday.
Unfortunately, my cake euphoria didn’t last long. You see, a few years after I discovered
Cafe Cakes, Noriko moved back to Japan. It was a sad, sad day for cake lovers in Boston.
How could she just leave us like that?
There was no way around it. I had to learn to make that cake. Given my learning disability
when it comes to anything sugar and flour related, I expected it to take years. But
it only took one try. In fact, it’s the only time in my life that a baked good worked
for me on the first try. I got a recipe for chiffon cake from the Joy of Cooking. Replaced
the liquid component with very strong tea and it worked. So if baking gives you hibbi-jibbies,
this is a perfect place to start.
At least 2 hours before making the batter, steep 3 Tbsp of good quality earl gray tea
in 2 cups of boiling water. I don’t recommend using tea bags for this cake since most tea
bags contain ground up leaves and we want whole leaves here. I realize that this tea
is way too strong to drink. We need it this way to balance the sugar in the cake. A huge
chiffon cake can only take about 1 cup of tea, so this tea needs to be insanely strong
for its flavor to come through. Why are we brewing 2 cups of tea? To have back up. If
something goes wrong with your recipe and you need to restart, you don’t want to wait
another 2 hours for tea to brew and cool. If you are in a rush, and don’t want to
wait for the tea to cool. Give it 15 minutes to brew and then set it into an ice water
bath until it gets to room temperature (somewhere between 68F and 78F).
While my tea is cooling, I get my eggs out of the fridge for a couple of hours to bring
them to room temperature too. Cold whites will not reach their full volume. So be very
careful that all ingredients for the batter are between 68 and 78F. If you want to speed
up the warming up of the eggs, put them in warm water for 5 minutes before you crack
and separate them
Ok, our tea is ready, let’s preheat the oven to 325F and make the batter. Place 256
grams of cake flour, 285 grams of granulated sugar, 1 Tbsp of baking powder, and 1 tsp
table salt or 2 tsp Diamond Crystal Kosher salt into a sifter. Sift all these dry ingredients
into a medium bowl. If some sugar or salt crystals are large enough that they don’t
want to go through a sieve, discard them. Now we’ll set a sieve over a large bowl
and sift the dry ingredients again. Sifting twice distributes the baking powder more evenly
and ensures that your cake will have good texture.
We’ll need 5 large yolks (90g) and 8 large whites (240g) for this recipe. The yolks should
go into a medium bowl and the whites should go into a large mixer bowl (if you are using
a stand mixer like kitchenaid, that’s the standard mixer bowl). It is extremely important
for the mixer bowl to be perfectly clean. If any yolk or some other fat gets into the
whites, they won’t reach their full volume. That’s why I like to have a temporary little
bowl for my whites. If a yolk breaks, I’ll just discard that egg without contaminating
all my whites. I know it’s not very elegant, but my favorite way to separate eggs is to
crack an egg into a bowl and scoop out the yolk with my fingers. I find that it’s faster
than pouring the egg back and forth between the shells, and unlike the sharp shells, my
fingers almost never break the yolks.
Put the bowl with the yolks on the scale and add 177g of tea, 112g of canola oil or any
neutral oil (like grapeseed, vegetable, or safflower) and 1 tsp of vanilla extract or
paste. Whisk these wet ingredients until perfectly smooth. I like to use a hand mixer for this,
but you can also do it with a whisk.
Squeeze out and add 3 firmly packed tablespoons on tea leaves. They make the texture of the
cake much more interesting. Then add all this wet stuff to the flour mixture and fold it
in using a spatula. Make sure you don’t have any more streaks of flour and if you
encounter any lumps, squash them against the sides of the bowl. As I was mixing this batter,
I realized that adding dry ingredients on top of wet might result in fewer lumps. But
I find that with chiffon cakes overmixing it’s nearly as big of a problem as it is
with other cakes. You don’t want to mix the batter just for fun, but it’s ok to
gently squash all the lumps.
Now let’s prepare the egg whites. Add ½ tsp of cream of tartar to the egg whites.
And whip them using the whisk attachment. Start on low speed and gradually crank it
up to high.
When the whites get to foamy but still droopy stage, gradually beat in 57 grams of granulated
sugar and continue beating on high speed until the whites get to stiff peaks.
Yes, it’s possible to overbeat egg whites, so check the mixture frequently.
Oh no, I totally overexposed my whites. That’s not a cooking term. It’s a photography term.
White stuff is so hard to film. But that’s ok, you’ll see the texture when we fold
them into the batter.
Start with a third of the whites. Make sure you use the folding motion, not stirring motion.
Cut through the whites to the bottom of the bowl and lift the batter up. With the other
hand rotate the bowl after each fold.
When the whites are almost integrated into batter, add the remaining whites and fold
them until the mixture is completely homogeneous. Be patient. It’s a lot of batter to mix.
But it’s important to be thorough or you’ll get white streaks in your cake and the texture
won’t be right.
Now let’s talk about the bakeware. If you want the best possible texture for your cake,
a tube pan is a must. Mine is 9 and a half inches in diameter. Do not grease the pan.
The cake needs to stick to the sides to prevent collapse after baking. If you are using a
10 inch pan, add all the batter. If you are using a 9 and a half inch pan, I suggest you
remove 100 grams of batter from the bowl before filling your pan. Normally, I put all the
batter in the pan and after it’s baked, the cake domes slightly and needs to be leveled.
When making this video I saved 100g of batter to use for cupcakes and the cake came out
perfectly level with no need for trimming. So in the future, I think I’ll just discard
100 grams of batter so that my cake doesn’t need trimming. After you add the batter, smooth
it out with a spatula. An offset spatula works particularly well for this. I meant to tap
the cake on the counter to get rid of large bubbles, but I completely forgot. So, shh,
I won’t tell if you won’t tell. Another way to get rid of bubbles before you bake
is to put the batter in the pan and then run a skewer through it all over before baking.
Another option for this batter is to make cupcakes. These 5 oz baking cups need 50 grams
of batter each. So the whole batch produces roughly 24 cupcakes. After you fill the cups,
tap them on the counter a few times to distribute the batter evenly and get rid of large air
bubbles.
Put the cake or cupcakes in the middle of 325F oven and bake until the skewer comes
out clean. Start testing the cupcakes after 30 minutes and the cake after 60 minutes.
For a large cake I try a few spots. It is safer to overbake a little than underbake.
If you watch my other videos, you’ll notice that I am a huge believer in thermometers.
But I’ve noticed that thermometers sometimes mislead me when it comes to cakes and breads.
I am not sure if the reason for it is the texture of baked goods. When you stick a thermometer
into a cake you are basically sticking it into hot air. And these thermometers are really
meant for denser stuff.
Another reason for it might be that breads and cakes need to not only reach a particular
temperature, but sit at that temperature for a few minutes to set. So I use a thermometer
as one data point, but not the only one. If my thermometer is reading below 200F, there
is no way the cake is ready. But if it is reading 200F or higher, I use a toothpick
as a confirmation that the crumb structure is really set.
Cupcakes are so little they don’t collapse, so you can just cool them on a rack. But the
cake can totally collapse. To avoid that, it needs to be cooled upside down. Insert
a wine bottle into the center of the cake and flip it over. So in case you are wondering
why chiffon cakes aren’t usually baked in normal round cake pans. That’s why. A tube
pan gives you more walls for support resulting in a cake that’s particularly tall and fluffy.
It allows you to get the cake so stuck in the pan that you can cool it upside down without
the cake falling out, but it also offers a mechanism for unsticking the cake once it’s
cool. If you get a cake this stuck in a round cake pan, good luck getting it out.
Cool the cake completely. That will take about 2 hours and then you can get it out. To remove
the cake from the pan, use an offset spatula to cut all around the cake. I prefer a spatula
because I don’t like using my sharp knives on metal pans.
Go around the inner tube too.
And lift the cake out.
Then insert a spatula between the bottom of the pan and the cake.
Flip the cake onto a serving dish or a cake turntable if you have one. Oops, I got a hole.
Should have tapped that cake. But once we ice it, no one will know.
For cupcakes, go over the outside with a spatula
and then dig it under a bit
and the cupcake will come out.
Ok, time for the whipped cream. Pour 90 grams of tea (no leaves this time) into a microwavable
cup. Sprinkle 1 tsp of gelatin evenly over the surface of the tea. Let the gelatin soften,
without stirring for 5 minutes. Put in the microwave just until all the gelatin is melted.
Check every 10 seconds. After the first 10 seconds I still saw gelatin specks. After
10 more seconds I saw fewer specs. And after 10 more seconds everything melted. If you
don’t have a microwave, you can also set this cup into a pan of simmering water for
about a minute to achieve the same result. Cool the tea to about 70F. While the tea is
cooling chill a mixer bowl and a whisk attachment in the fridge for at least 15 minutes. To
make whipped cream everything needs to be cold. The cream, the beater and the bowl.
Sift 56 g of powdered sugar. You might need to help yourself with fingers a bit to make
it all go through the sieve. When the tea and gelatin mixture is close
to 70F, stir in 1 tsp of vanilla extract or paste.
Put 464 grams of cold heavy cream into a cold bowl. And start whipping it on medium speed.
When the mixture gets slightly foamy, crank up the speed to high.
When the cream starts to thicken, very slowly pour in the tea mixture.
Reduce speed to medium-low and add the powdered sugar a spoonful at a time.
Stop the mixer to scrape down the sides of the bowl
and beat on high speed until the cream is thick and holds stiff peaks.
Careful not to over-whip or you’ll get butter.
When you are done, the cream should look like this. I learned from my egg whites mistake
how to film white stuff, so you can actually see what I am doing for a change.
So the cupcakes are easy. You just pipe on the cream and you are done. But the cake.
Oh my gosh. I am so not the person to teach you how to frost a cake. Basically I just
smear the cream on with an offset spatula. I used to just do it on a plate with a butter
knife. The turntable and offset spatulas are very recent purchases. And then I heard that
you should do this thing called crumb coating. That means coating the cake with a thin layer
of cream to seal in the crumbs and then putting it in the freezer for about 15 minutes to
set before frosting it the second time. This way you won’t have any crumbs showing in
your frosting. I’ll be honest with you it’s the first time I am crumb coating anything.
Ok. Into the freezer we go. And then 15 minutes later, let’s finish this thing.
More cream. More smearing. Even more cream and even more smearing. As always I gave up
on producing nice smooth sides and just drew some lines to cover up all the imperfections.
Then I piped the remaining cream into some weird asymmetrical ruffle until I ran out
of cream. After you are done torturing your cake or cupcakes, it is very important that
you put it in the fridge for at least 4 hours. It is absolutely not ok to serve this cake
right away. The cream texture will be all wrong. For cupcakes, it’s important to keep
them in an airtight container or they’ll dry up. The cake doesn’t need any coverage.
The cream will protect it.
I find that this cake tastes best the day after it’s made, but it will keep well in
the fridge for up to 4 days.
There is nothing particularly pretty or gooey about this cake, but the flavor is unbelievable.
I think you can see the texture better on a big cake.
As usual, I’ll provide links to equipment like the tube pan and baking cups below this
video. Since there are so many different components and steps to this cake, I will also give you
a link to a written recipe. Yeah, not just ingredients like I usually do, but the entire
procedure as well.
Here are more thought provoking culinary videos for you to check out and if you are ever in
the Boston area, maybe I’ll see you in one of my classes.