i’ve baked chiffon cakes with good success rate until this! how difficult it is to bake them in colour. just divide and add col right? wrong.
to preserve the colouring and avoid burnt/caramelised sides and bottom, the coloured chiffon batter has to be baked in low temperature, so need a much longer baking time.
i failed both times and as i am typing this. there is another one in the oven!
i usually blog and post about success stories but i want to share these failures with you too! so don’t judge me ok! 🙂
i love cuisine paradise’s orange chiffon cake recipe. not too big a cake and i had many practices. almost fail proof to me so i thought.
i used this recipe but adjusted the timing and temperature according to the creative chiffon experts blog – loving creations for you, the timing and temperature for 4 eggs whites recipe is 160 C for 15 minutes and 140 for another 15 -20 minutes.
it looked very nice in the oven, tall and colour as it should be but collapsed and dropped while cooling. i was watching the telly and heard a loud bang. aiyer… why like that?!! i am baking this for a friend as her belated birthday gift and i am meeting her for lunch tomorrow!!
undeterred i started the whole process again (i have just washed and cleared the sink!). this time i use loving creations for you recipe but replaced mandarin orange with orange juice and zest.
i cut the previous cake into pretty blossom flowers and hearts and align them in the pan before pouring the coloured batter. this time i kiasu – separated and made 2 colours only.
it too was beautiful in the oven, tall and little cracks this time. unfortunately for the second time, it was shrinking too fast and almost like collapsing while cooling. i reheat oven and baked it again for another 10 minutes. oh well, too late. still vertically challenged but better shape than the first. not pretty because coloured ‘chow tar ‘/ burnt/caramelised? due to overbaked the second time.
can you read the name?
both cakes were tested with a skewer which came out clean confirming that the cakes were cooked. tasted ok too just not fluffy and light. sigh.. what to do. it was too late into the night and i had no more energy to bake another.
(the birthday girl called the next day and said she had to take a rain check because she was not feeling well. er. ok. i have no cake for her….phew! )
now let’s talk about the third attempt, the next morning.
i repeated the second recipe. i used yuzu marmalade to replace orange juice and added some lemon zest as i ran out of oranges.
i measured and divided the batter and meringue to 3 parts equally. i did the same for the above bakes. my agaran quite bad. i’ve learnt that from from my homemade bread buns. shaped dough/balls looked the same size to my eyes but all grown to different sizes in the oven.
note: i measured the batter bowl and meringue bowl. then measured them again with the batter and meringue inside to get the latter actual weight and divide to 3.
i used pastel pink and blue wilton food gel colour. just dip a tooth pick once into the gel colour and tint the batter.
baked according to the recipe time. used an oven thermometer this time just to be sure. tested with skewer.
again it was shrinking too fast to my liking when cooling. i then decided to just let it cool in the hot oven (off mode). it stopped shrinking and so here it is my 3 coloured chiffon cake. the prettiest of 3 and tallest.
dented at the side. bummer… 😦
lovely pastel colour inside. 💕
there’s plenty of room for improvement. well, practice makes perfect!
Cheers, ☕
karen
sew.bake.bike 
