Celebrating the Chiffon Cake

[kevin313]

We've always loved these cakes, even though they fell out of "cake fashion" a long time ago. Light, delicate and endless flavor possibilites. This one is orange and we served it up with a rhubarb sauce.

Celebrating the Chiffon Cake!

When chiffon cakes first hit the American baking scene in the late 1940’s, they created a huge sensation. It’s hard to believe that a ca...

cavalcadeoffood.blogspot.com

 

[hoovermatic]

I just bought myself a brand new chiffon cake pan and am planning on road testing it with a coffee chiffon cake very soon - I love them, fashionable or not!

 

[tomturbomatic]

I remember in the 50s, there was a new Chiffon cake recipe in every magazine. I wonder if people gave up out of frustration when the cake needed 5 yolks and 6 whites: what am I going to do with the extra yolk? The upside was that after they baked a cake with oil in their angel food pan, they could not use it again for angel food so they were out of the big cake business because those angel food pans had to be kept grease free. Mom used to take a new dish cloth out of the drawer to wash the pan so as not to contaminate it with grease. It was almost as bad as keeping kosher. Mom had another tube pan way up in the cabinet over the sink and I asked her one day why she did not use it and was told that she had used it once, way before I could remember and I was 9 at the time, for a pound cake so it could never be used for an angel food cake again. Damn! It stayed in a cupboard until we moved her out of the house almost 50 years later. Talk about cursed!

 

[norgeway]

Oh mercy!!

No one ever told me that, I use mine for pound cakes as well as Angel Food!!LOL I do wash them well and ive never had any trouble.My Mother used to seperate eggs and then pick out every bit of the white part because she said it was NASTY!!LOL

 

[mattl]

Have to say I've made dozens and dozens of chiffon cakes over the years, it's my favorite cake, and never worried what the pan had been used for before, total non-issue for me.  My favorite is a custard Chiffon, I posted it here years ago, with a cooked frosting.  Second favorite is a marble version with Kelly's cooked chocolate frosting --yum!  I even bought the copper bowl liner for my KA mixer just for making Chiffon cakes, the copper helps the egg whites beat up well.

 

Truth be told I've never had an orange chiffon turn out the way I liked, but now I'll have to try this one!

 

[tomturbomatic]

Matt, It's not the chiffon cake that is affected, but the angelfood cakes that can fail to launch if a trace of grease remains in the pan. Apparently this was more of a problem when soap was used to clean dishes instead of modern detergents. Mom always removed the chalaza from the egg, too. It is the part that suspends the yolk in the lining membrane of the egg, one at each end. Nothing wrong with it, but I guess it looked icky to them.

Have you ever seen old electric skillets that had brown baked on grease on the outside? It's a result of them being washed last and lowered into the water when the soap or weak detergent was overwhelmed and grease was floating on the top of the water. It adhered to the outside of the pan which was not washed as well as the inside so the grease baked on. I guess with stuff like that happening in the dishpan, the warnings about keeping grease away from the angel food pans was spot on. I remember ladies with Revere Ware with baked or burnt on grease on the outside of the pans, usually with a gas stove too, or how else do you get burnt on grease near where the handles attached to the pan? These people would say that they did not think a dishwasher would get pans clean. I would listen to them and go home and look at our pans with not the first sign of burned on grease or any grease even before we got a dishwasher and just knew there was something wrong with the way they (did not) wash their pans.

 

[danemodsandy]

Tom:

I agree completely. Most people would storm out of a restaurant if they found its dishes and utensils were washed as badly as they are in their own homes.

Sanitation aside, there's a huge benefit to really clean pots and pans - the pan that looks like new cooks like new. Sticking and hot spots are not usually part of the picture with well-maintained cookware.

All that angel food pan rigamarole is a thing of the past now that modern detergents are in the picture. You can get a tube pan absolutely free of grease if you want to.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - most people wait on themselves in a fashion they would not tolerate from Motel 6.

 

[rayjay]

I love chiffon cakes and experimented with many finding the most moist one was from the Joy of Cooking cookbook. I either make it in orange or lemon with a glaze or 7 min frosting.

Hi Matt..... Can you post the receipe for the Custard Chiffon cake again please?

I must have missed that one.

Thank You

Ray

 

[mickeyd]

Kevin,

I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this episode. So much fun and light-heartedness. It occurred to me that a Chiffon Cake is really an everyday homemade cake taken to the gourmet level or Mom's cake in a prom dress and spike heels.

All that orange, the juice, the peel, the extract--has to be heavenly. I could almost smell it. Thank You.

 

[jeffg]

In our Italian family, if anyone ever claimed a pan can't be used for one kind of cake because it had been used for another, they'd immediately call the OCD hotline. And in 40 years I don't remember a single collapsed angel food cake. Offhand I'd say some people either don't know which cleaning products to use or keep their water heaters turned down too far.

 

[franksdad]

Looks like another winner for sure!  And let me second the motion for Matt to post the custard chiffon cake recipe again please!  Thank you, Jim

 

[kevin313]

Let me add to the requests for the custard chiffon cake recipe - just the sound of it makes me want a big ole' piece of it!

Thanks for all the comments. We love orange flavored things, but this could easily be made lemon, if you prefer. There was a famous version of the chiffon that was served at the Brown Derby in Hollywood that was grapefruit!

I never heard the story about keeping a tube pan just for angel food cake because there might be leftover grease from another recipe. I use my tube pan often - for all kinds of cakes - and they all come out fine (I bought it for a dollar at my St. Vincent dePaul Thrift Store!). I agree that modern detergents are better for cutting grease, so this problem now relegated to the history books.

 

[westingman123]

Jeff!

"OCD hotline"--Lord Gawd, I've been chuckling over that for half an hour now.

Sadly, I'm probably a candidate for that hotline, having been reared by the original Mrs. Clean. Baking at our house involved washing each bowl and utensil as it was used--any delay was the beginning of the dreaded "mess" and therefore not tolerated.

"OCD hotline", that's just awesome. Consider it a stolen line.

 

[tomturbomatic]

The advent of vegetable oil led to many new recipes and cooking procedures and the chiffon cake was one. Magazines from the late 40s into the 50s had all sorts of new uses for vegetable oil. One that I remember was to cook vegetables in a couple of spoons of vegetable oil and a spoon of water to seal in vitamins and flavor without worrying about veggies sticking and burning. It was no doubt an outgrowth of the waterless cooking school. Mom always made the corn oil pie crust with 2/3s cup of oil and 3 TBS of milk stirred together and added to the flour in the pie plate. No rolling needed.

 

[mattl]

Marble Chiffon...

 

[mattl]

Custard Chiffon...

 

[mattl]

Cocoa Chiffon...

 

[mattl]

Here is one I've never tried...

 

Cherry /Nut Chiffon Cake...

 

[mattl]

Somehow the side recipe seemed apropos for this site!

 

Banana Chiffon Cake...