Monday 13 August 2012

Orange Chiffon Cake for Clandestine Cake Club




It was that time of month again – Clandestine Cake Club, where members take along a cake to a secret location revealed at last minute. This month’s theme was ‘Feels Like Summer’ and the location was the Westport Bar in Dundee. We had the function suite to ourselves, to fill our faces with yummy cake and talk about cake. Heaven.

Now, I have a thing about the colour orange, no idea why, but I love it. I have lots of orange in my kitchen, on my desk at work, my iPhone case is orange etc. I don’t know if it stems from the preponderance of orange in the 1970’s when I was growing up, I had orange checked flannelette sheets on my bed, we had vivid orange cushions on our brown waffle effect sofa…anyhoo I digress. Summer to me feels orange and I had recently looked at some recipes for chiffon cakes. These are very light cakes baked in a special pan, made largely with egg whites, and inverted when cooling so the cake doesn’t implode on itself. Sounds convoluted I know. But I thought an orange chiffon cake would be perfect to say it should feel like summer! So off to Amazon I popped to buy an angel cake pan.



Ingredients:

4 Large Egg Yolks
15 g Sugar
50 ml Groundnut Oil
50 ml Freshly Squeezed Orange Juice
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
70 g Plain Flour (minus one tablespoon), sifted
1 tablespoon Cornflour
Zest of 2 Oranges

80g Sugar
8 g Cornflour
4 Large Egg Whites

Method:
Preheat your oven to 160oC. Have a 7” angel cake pan ready (look for them on Amazon or Ebay if you don’t have one) – do not grease it!

In a bowl sift together the plain flour and corn flour 5 times! I know, but the recipe calls for cake flour, which we don’t get in the UK. So do this and it will give you something akin to cake flour!
In a bowl, mix together the sugar and eggs yolks until slightly thickened. Next add the oil, orange juice and vanilla and mix to incorporate. Add the flour mix and orange zest and stir to combine. The mixture will be fairly thick.



Next beat the egg whites until they get a bit frothy, then add the cornflour and sugar and beat on high until stiff peaks form. Take a quarter of this meringue mix and carefully fold into the sticky wet mix, then add the rest of the meringue, folding it in very carefully so as not to get rid of the air in the meringue. When no white streaks of fluff are seen then you are good to go. Spoon the batter into the angel food pan and bake for 50 minutes, the cake will rise quite high during baking, but fall slightly toward the end. Remove from the oven and carefully turn the pan upside down balancing it on some upturned drinking glasses (or similar). 



Leave the cake for an hour to cool completely. Then with a sharp knife, loosen it from the pan, it should come away fairly neatly.



To decorate I made a simple icing from 125 grams of icing sugar and some orange juice, adding a tablespoon at a time until I got a nice drizzling consistency. I then added some orange segments for a final flourish.



The cake club was great fun, chatting to new friends and meeting co-host Becca’s lovely parents from Melbourne. There was a lovely lemon and prosecco cake, eton mess cake and many more. My cake was a hit and ‘eaters’ loved the lightness of it. Now I have invested in the angel cake pan, I guess I will have to try differing versions – stay posted…!


Westport Bar
66 North Lindsay Street
Dundee
DD1 1PS

01382 221634

15 comments:

  1. Wow, that's one stunning cake! I've never heard of chiffon cake but it sounds delicious. Oranges definitely make for a lovely summery cake!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Kim - the cake was unbelievably light. Glad you agree that oranges = summer :)

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  2. That is an amazing looking cake! And it sounds as lovely as it looks

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  4. looks delish - saw a pic of that cake on the Tinned Tomatoes blog about the same event.

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    Replies
    1. Aw cheers Junkie, Jac's Eton Mess cake was amazing!!!

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  5. Looks great - but I've never known why you have to cool the cake with the tin like that balance on those little feet. Any ideas?

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    1. Hi CC - yep, cake is so light, if you cooled it right way up, it implodes on itself - cooling it upside down prevents this. The texture is almost like a souffle when baking.

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  6. This is an awesome looking cake! love the way you arranged those orange slices so artistically on top! and that drizzle is seriously inviting! I'm missing not going to CCC but am hoping to start one up in Vancouver next month!

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    1. Thanks Gem - you should start up a new CCC - if I ever get across to visit my aunt and uncle I could maybe pop along ;)

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  7. I love baking and eating chiffon cake. Orange is a lovely flavour and you've got great height with your cake! I really need to get myself to a CCC as I'm always envious looking at all the delicious cakes but due to a combination of circumstances still have not managed to get to my nearest one!

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  8. your cake looks scrumptious! i've always been too afraid to try making a chiffon cake. Are there any South African shops around you? Shops like Savanna sell cake flour. I've also noticed that Sainsbury's have recently started selling '00' flour as well.

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    Replies
    1. No South African shops sadly, but I will be checking out Sainsbury's now! Thanks for the tip :)

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