Lemon chiffon cake

I became an ardent fan of Anita’s blog, A Mad Tea Party after we tried her zamodod at home some time back. We’ve made the zamodod a hundred times since then.I tried her chiffon cake a few weekends back. She’s adapted her recipe from Bakign bites but I followed her recipe exactly, except for the fact that I halved it. A 6 egg cake seemed too big for my small family. You can read her original here.

Ingredients:

• 2 ¼ C sifted APF
• 1 ¼ Cpowdered sugar
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• ½ C milk
• 5 tbsp refined peanut oil
• zest and juice of 2 lemons
• 1 ½ tsp vanilla essence
• 6 eggs, separated

Method:

• Preheat oven to 160 deg.C.
• Keeping aside 2 tbsp of sugar, mix all dry ingredients in a bowl.
• In another bowl mix the yolks, oil, vanilla essence, lemon juice and zest and milk. Pour this mixture into the dry ingredients mixture. Mix well till well mixed.
• In another dry bowl beat the egg whites till very fluffy. Add 2 tbsp of sugar kept aside of sugar and beat till stiff peaks form. Using a metal spoon, gently fold half of the egg whites into the cake batter. Make sure it is thoroughly mixed. Fold in the remaining egg whites.
• Pour into a prepared baking tin& bake for 45-60 minutes.

Notes: I like lemon flavour in general-in cakes, tarts, whatever. That was one reason for wanting to try out this cake. That and the fact that I had never made a chiffon cake before.  Beating the egg whites is not as hard as is often made out to be.  What I find hard is  folding it in the rest of the batter! Thats coz you have to be very gentle and patient while you are at it. I like cakes in which you can beat it all in! But really, if you put your mind to it, folding in is neither difficult nor very time consuming. The chiffon cake’s texture is very different from a pound cake. And if you are used to eating only pound cakes, you might say this cake tastes a bit strange. The first time I bit into a piece, I took a while to figure out how it tasted like the usual cake, yet tasted different. By bite 3 I was over the figuring-out phase and into the enjoying-the-munching phase. My colleauge however, never moved from one phase to the next. She kept saying “This is not your usual cake. Your usual cake is nice.. this is…umm…different…. is this kaccha?No? it tastes different.”  I guess when she said “tastes” she actaully meant “felt”.  Chiffon cakes do have a distinct texture thats hard to describe. You have to eat it to know for yourself. Based on my experience and that of my colleague, I think I should issue this warning- if you havent been exposed to chiffon cakes before, bite into one with an open, accepting mind. Its like trying out any other new food. You take some time to get used to the flavour and the texture but essentially it is a cake that looks and tastes just fine! Unlike angel cakes- I have tried those one and I think they just taste and feel so weird!:P

I made half the original quantity but it still took me about 50 mins to bake it completely. I served my cake plain but you could pair it up with ice cream as suggested by Anita or cover the cake with a layer of chocolate frosting like her.

Oh,by the way, I am so done with cakes for now. I have done so many cakes that they are no longer fun. So we arent going to do cakes for a while here. Unless you guys have some absolutely great recipe that you think I shouldnt miss…