Vanilla mocha marble chiffon cake

I’ve always wondered if it was absolutely necessary to use a tube pan when baking chiffon cakes. I could have used my silicone bundt pan but I had a theory that using a baking pan with a hole at the center was more of a tradition rather than a must. So I took my chances and baked my vanilla-mocha marble chiffon cake using a round silicone cake pan. Well, it turned out great.

The recipe is based on Stephanie Jaworski’s Orange Chiffon Cake which, in turn, was adapted from The Woman’s Association of St. Paul’s United Church’s (Spryfield, Nova Scotia) Book One Favorite Recipes. Of course, I used neither orange juice nor orange zest. I substituted plain water. And because I wanted to make a marble cake, I divided the batter into two and added coffee to one portion.

Note that this recipe will yield more cake batter than an 8-inch round cake pan can accommodate. What I did was to make cupcakes with the excess that the kids brought to school for recess. But that’s for the next entry.

Ingredients :

7 eggs (at room temperature)
2 1/4 c. of sifted cake flour
1 1/2 c. white sugar (you can increase this to 1 3/4 cups)
1 tbsp. baking powder
3 tbsps. of instant coffee
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 c. vegetable oil
3/4 c. water
1 tbsp. vanilla extract

Baking procedure :

Preheat the oven to 170 ^oC.

Separate the eggs yolks from the whites.

Reserve 3 tbsps. of sugar. Place the rest in a large mixing bowl together with the flour, salt and baking powder. Stir well. Make a well in the center and add the egg yolks, vegetable oil, water and vanilla extract. Beat until smooth (about a minute with an electric mixer at medium speed or about 100 strokes by hand). Divide the batter into two equal portions. Stir in 3 tbsps. of good quality instant coffee (I used Nescafe Gold) into one portion.

In another bowl, beat the egg whites until until soft peaks form. I recommend an electric mixer. This can be done by hand but it won’t be easy. Gradually add the reserved 3 tbsps. of sugar and beat until stiff peaks form. Using a rubber spatula, with a cut and fold motion, mix half of the egg white mixture into the coffee-flavored batter. Use the remaining half for the white batter. This is the trickiest part of making chiffon cakes. Folding the stiffly-beaten egg whites into the batter should be done properly so as not to burst the air bubbles that have formed. These air bubbles will give the baked cake its soft and airy texture so you really want to retain them.

Using two soup ladles, alternately scoop the white and coffee-flavored batter into an ungreased 8-inch round cake pan until the pan is 3/4 full. Take a small knife, plunge into the mixture inside the cake ban and swirl two or three times to create the marbling effect.

Bake in the preheated oven for about 50 minutes or until a knife inserted at the center comes out clean. Cool for about 30 minutes before inverting to a plate.

In the next entry, I’ll show you the cupcakes that I baked using the leftover cake batter.