Week 4: Orange Chiffon Cake

Yay! Orange Chiffon Cake! A first for me :)  I've never made this type of cake before, so it was nice to learn something new.  We started the class with a demo on how to make Angel food cake followed by making the Orange Chiffon cake.

Angel food cake seems simple to make, but doesn't have much flavour.  I think if I was to serve it, I'd plate it with a raspberry or strawberry sauce and whipped cream.  It needs to be served with something since the batter is not really flavoured with anything, it's just egg whites, sugar, flour and a little bit of vanilla.  The texture is nice though, its very light and airy.

It gets its airiness from whipping the egg whites to soft peaks, whipping in the sugar and then gently folding in the dry ingredients.  Keeping lots of air in the batter allows for the cake to be very light.  

Orange chiffon cake is similar to angel food cake, but it also has egg yolks, oil and obviously, orange zest :)  Adding the extra fat with the egg yolks and oil makes the cake richer, but it is still light from the whipped egg whites.  When the instructor made it, she admitted that she over whipped the egg whites, until they were dry stiff peaks.  This resulted in a chewy porous cake.  When you make this, you have to be very careful with the egg whites since their texture can drastically change the cake's texture.

I learned some new tips in this class :)  If you need to whip egg whites and you don't have enough time to let your eggs come to room temperature, place them in hot tap water for a few minutes to warm them up.  Also, to make sure your bowl is clean and has no trace of oils before you whip the egg whites, rub the bowl with a little lemon juice.  A clean non-plastic bowl and room temperature eggs will make sure the egg whites whip up well.

For the glaze, we juiced the orange which we previously zested for the cake and added icing sugar...super simple! I drizzled it over the cake and voila!