Poh’s chiffon cake is a three-layered extravanganza stuffed with cream and hazelnuts and covered with ganache; it has coconut milk in it, and lots of zest and orange juice. The zest came courtesy of The Saucemaker’s unsprayed, unwaxed backyard-grown oranges, but I used deep red blood orange juice from un-organic oranges; I wanted pink cake, but in spite of the promise in the measuring jug, it turned out plain old white.
Sooo before yesterday’s attempt, the couple more goes at chiffon cake since the black sesame have turned out like so many macarons...
...but a tiny chink of logic filtered through to my insomnia-ridden frontal lobe.
I’d been observing the chiffon-cake rule about not greasing or lining the tin, but also following the advice of some false friends on the internet about still lining the base so that only the sides need to have a knife run around them once cool.
Of course, it’s largely the cake adhering to the base when inverted that prevents it from falling into a flat tasty pancake. And of course my tin has a removable base anyway, so releasing the cake from that is eminently doable.
This looked almost as it should. It was a bit lopsided, and the top didn’t quite make it in one piece, and in slicing it into three it became clear that one side was more cooked than the other.
The ganache filled any nooks and crannies on top but then wasn’t sufficient to cover the sides as well; the two layers of cream wanted to break free from their confines and meld with the ganache.
But the texture was what I imagine it should be, and the hint of orange and crunch of hazelnut and ooze of whipped cream were all good. And with about five eggs per mouthful, unbelievably rich and filling.
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