Fluffy Chocolate Sponge Cake (巧克力海绵蛋糕)

Ladies and gentlemen, please meet my seized chocolate cake:

Seized?

Don't worry, I haven't seized anything from anyone. It's cocoa powder that's doing the seizing, not me.

My very soft and fluffy chocolate cake is made with cocoa powder that's mixed with hot oil. The scalding helps bring out the chocolate flavour. Of course, I use high quality cocoa powder or there wouldn't be any flavour to bring out.

When the oil and cocoa combo is not too hot and not too cold, I add a little bit of milk. This is when the seizing happens, i.e. the small cocoa particles absorb the milk, become sticky, and stick to one another to form bigger particles, resulting in a thick paste. The thickness of the cocoa paste is crucial to the success of chocolate sponge cake.

If the cocoa powder isn't seized at all, it'd be suspended in a runny liquid, which will sink to the bottom of the pan during baking. The cake will be pale and bland except for the bottommost 2 mm or so. If that thin layer is stuck to the pan or parchment paper after unmoulding, then the cake doesn't taste of chocolate at all.

If the cocoa powder is "over-seized", it becomes too coarse and will look like ground black pepper in the cake. The colour of the crumb, light brown with specks of black, won't look right. There will be some chocolate flavour but it'll be weak.

When the thickness of the cocoa paste is just right, the chocolate flavour is strong and spread evenly in the cake. And the cake's colour is a nice medium-brown, not pale.

How do you control how much the cocoa powder seizes? By watching the temperature. The hotter the oil and cocoa powder mixture is when milk is added, the stronger the seizing. The right moment for adding the milk is when the bowl holding the mixture doesn't feel hot but is still quite warm.

Of the various types of cake I bake, chocolate sponge rises the most, more than even chiffon cakes. The batter more than doubles in height in the oven. After shrinking a bit whilst cooling down, the cake is twice as tall as before baking. The more the batter rises, the fluffier the cake, right?

To make the batter rise as much as possible, the bottom of the pan should have more heat than the top. Separate controls for the oven's top and bottom heating elements would be very handy. If your oven isn't so fancy, as mine isn't, just bake the cake on the bottom instead of middle shelf.

After baking comes eating. When the chocolate sponge is unadorned and still warm, the fluffiness really shows through. If you are a chocolate fiend, you could cover or sandwich the cake with ganache. Whipped cream or buttercream, whether plain or chocolate-flavoured, is quite nice too. Do you like black forest cake? A sexed up chocolate cake would be ideal for a celebration.

Compared to my vanilla sponge and pandan sponge recipes, chocolate sponge is easier. The batter is more stable because it has less egg white, so it doesn't deflate easily. With this recipe, I think even a novice baker can bake a chocolate cake that's soft, fluffy, moist and chocolatey . . . if he/she follows the instructions. That's not too difficult . . . is it?



12 December 2013 Update
Here's a video to explain why glucose helps make cakes fluffy:
 

CHOCOLATE SPONGE CAKE (巧克力海绵蛋糕) Source: adapted from FoodHouse8 (Recipe for one 20 x 12 x 5 cm cake) 25 g corn oil 10 g Dutch-processed cocoa powder 10 g milk, cold ⅛ tsp salt ½ tsp vanilla extract 10 g glucose 105 g whole eggs 15 g egg yolk 80 g castor sugar 50 g cake flour ⅛ tsp baking soda butter, softened, for greasing Measure ingredients as detailed above. Grease 20 x 12 x 5 cm cake pan with butter. Line pan with parchment paper. Generously grease paper. Preheat oven to 170°C. Heat oil till very hot, almost smoking. Add to cocoa powder. Mix thoroughly. (There should be a chocolate aroma. If there isn't, either your oil isn't hot enough or you've got crap cocoa powder, or both.) Let mixture cool down slightly, till bowl doesn't feel hot but is still quite warm. Add milk. Stir thoroughly. (You should now have a smooth or slightly grainy paste that coats sides of bowl thickly.) Add vanilla extract and salt. Stir again. Set aside to cool down completely. Whisk glucose, eggs and yolk till starting to thicken. Gradually add castor sugar whilst still whisking. Continue to whisk till mixture is thick and pale, reducing speed towards the end to remove big air bubbles. Add cocoa paste in 2 batches. Whisk till you don't see any streaks of cocoa after each addition. Thoroughly scrape bottom of bowl with spatula and fold till evenly mixed. Sift cake flour and baking soda into bowl in 2 batches. Mix with whisk after each addition, stirring just top part of egg mixture. Scrape down and fold with spatula till just evenly mixed, banging mixing bowl against worktop 2-3 times. Pour batter into cake pan. Tap pan against worktop 2-3 times. Bake in bottom of oven till batter doesn't move when gently jiggled, about 20 minutes, rotating pan as necessary so that cake rises evenly. Transfer to middle of oven. Continue baking till skewer inserted into centre of cake comes out clean, 5 minutes or so. Remove cake to wire rack. Wait a few moments. When top of cake starts to wrinkle, unmould. Peel paper from sides of cake. Leave cake on wire rack to cool down. Cut with serrated knife. Remove paper from bottom of cake. Dig in.

Pandan Sponge Cupcakes (班兰海绵杯子蛋糕)

I like my pandan sponge cupcakes very much. Made with pandan juice and coconut oil, the little cakes are very fragrant and the green colour is totally natural. The crumb is soft and fluffy, and it's still moist the next day.

If you're new to the whole egg method for making sponge cakes, please refer to my post on vanilla sponge cupcakes for tips on how to mix the batter without deflating it.

If, despite your best efforts, the batter loses a lot of air after you add flour and oil, switch to plan B. Which is? I suggest pancakes. I've never tried any before but I'd imagine pandan pancakes are quite nice.

The best tool for grinding pandan leaves to make pandan juice is a food processor. A mortar and pestle works well too, and it has the added bonus of helping you burn a few calories.

If you use a blender, the leaves must have some water added, which makes the juice too diluted. You have to let it settle for a few hours or overnight, then skim the excess water that floats on top.

If your pandan leaves are frozen instead of fresh, you must also let the juice settle even if it doesn't have water added, then use just the dark green part in the bottom.

Please don't use old, dark green leaves. Pick the ones that are soft and almost white or light green. If the leaves seem dry, soak them in water for about 30 minutes. Don't leave them in the water too long or the juice would be diluted.

A potato ricer is the most efficient tool for pressing the pulp. A small tea strainer that has a metal mesh works well too if it's the right size.

The colour of the eggs affects the colour of the cakes. Bright yellow yolks would mask the pandan juice's green colour. Use eggs with pale yellow yolks, e.g. Pasar brand, if you like your cakes as green as possible.

I use old-fashioned coconut oil for my pandan sponge cupcakes. That's the fragrant type made by simply heating coconut milk. On no account use deodourized oil, a newfangled thing that's supposed to be a health food. Virgin coconut oil, whatever that is, is fine if it's fragrant. If it isn't, you might as well use vegetable oil.

My pandan sponge cupcakes are quite fussy about what they're baked in. Hokkaido cupcake moulds give the best results. The cakes baked in these square cardboard moulds are perfectly fluffy and evenly browned. If you use other types of mould, your cupcakes may not rise or brown well.

Making good pandan sponge cupcakes is quite easy. Here's my video to show it really is a piece of cake:

PANDAN SPONGE CUPCAKES (班兰海綿杯子蛋糕) (Recipe for 5 big cupcakes) 6 g glucose 100 g eggs 40 g castor sugar 40 g cake flour 30 g coconut oil 10 g pandan juice 1/16 tsp salt Measure and prep ingredients as detailed above. Preheat oven to 190°C. Whisk glucose, eggs and sugar till ribbon stage, i.e. when whisk is lifted, "ribbon" falls from whisk smoothly and sits on top of mixture without sinking. Sift half of cake flour into egg mixture, moving sieve around bowl so that flour isn't clumped in one area. Gently stir just top part of eggs with whisk till you don't see any flour. Sift remaining half of flour as before. Repeat gentle mixing. Stir pandan juice and coconut oil till well mixed. Gently drizzle mixture around bowl. Mix with whisk till you don't see any oil, again stirring just top part of batter. Fold, using spatula, till just evenly mixed. Divide batter equally between 5 Hokkaido cupcake moulds, about 45 g each. Place cupcakes on baking tray spaced apart. Bake cupcakes in bottom of oven till batter domes and doesn't move when baking tray is gently shaken, about 8 minutes. Gently move tray to upper-middle shelf. Bake till golden brown and slightly springy when pressed lightly, about 5 minutes. Rotate cupcakes as necessary during baking so that batter rises and browns evenly. Remove cupcakes to wire rack. Leave to cool down completely, or serve warm.

Vanilla Sponge Cupcakes (香草海绵杯子蛋糕)

The cake is fluffy, moist and not too holey. The buttercream is velvety smooth and not too rich or too sweet. The roses look reasonably like roses, and stayed that way without air-condition.

Yup, I'm happy with my vanilla cupcakes.

My sponge cupcakes are made with whole eggs, i.e. the eggs aren't separated. This method is a bit tricky because yolks and whites whisked together deflate easily when you add flour and butter/oil. Deflated batter makes cupcakes that are dense and hard.

I make light and fluffy sponge cupcakes that are moist, not dried out like some sponge cakes tend to be. And the crumb isn't too holey. How do I do it?

I whisk the eggs, along with sugar and a bit of glucose, till the ribbon stage, i.e. when I lift the whisk, a "ribbon" falls in a steady stream and sits on top of the mixture without sinking.

The eggs are now thick, with some air bubbles visible. To prevent the cake from being too holey and rough, I have to get rid of these visible air bubbles. How do I do that? By whisking slowly for a few minutes, till the eggs are silky smooth, i.e. I don't see any air bubbles.

Once the eggs are whisked to the right thickness and smoothness, I sift cake flour into the mixture. If it goes into one spot, all in one go, the flour would sink and stick to the bottom of the bowl. I can loosen the flour with a spatula, right? Sure I can but the eggs can't stand that much agitation. By the time I'm done, the mixture would be horribly deflated. Solution: sift the flour into the bowl in two lots, and move the sieve around as I sift. Done this way, the flour doesn't sink like it's in quicksand but sits nicely on the eggs.

After adding each batch of flour, I mix it with the eggs using a whisk. The objective here is not to mix evenly yet but quickly spread out the flour in the eggs so that it doesn't clump and form lumps. I have to stir gently, without the whisk touching the bottom of the bowl at all. The bottom half of the eggs is undisturbed, so it has no chance of deflating. It acts as the support for the top half, and prevents that from deflating as it's being mixed.

Milk, oil and vanilla extract are stirred together, then gently drizzled around the bowl so that some of the mixture – the more the better – sits on the batter. Next, I mix a bit with a whisk to gently and quickly spread out the amount that hasn't sunk and disappeared from view. Again, the whisk doesn't touch the bottom of the bowl.

I now have an uneven batter, right? I switch to a spatula and scrape down the sides of the bowl. Then I fold the batter, scraping the bottom of the bowl, and I keep folding till I don't see any oil or flour. I now have an evenly mixed batter that's totally billowy, not deflated.

The batter is very light and airy, so it sets very quickly in the oven. To make sure the top is nicely golden brown when the inside is done, I add a bit of glucose to the eggs before I start whisking. I also move the cakes a bit closer to the oven's top heat for the last five minutes of the baking.

What makes the cupcakes moist? It's the combination of oil, milk, glucose and sugar. Can you leave out or reduce any of these ingredients? Of course you can. Hey, you can leave out the flour, eggs, salt and vanilla extract as well and bake empty muffin pans in the oven if that suits you. Whatever floats your boat, you know? And if your boat sinks, or you have no boat to speak of, please don't ask me why.

VANILLA SPONGE CUPCAKES (香草海绵杯子蛋糕) (Recipe for 8 cupcakes) Cupcakes 100 g eggs 6 g glucose 40 g castor sugar 40 g cake flour 1/16 tsp salt 10 g full-fat milk 30 g corn oil add to milk ½ tsp vanilla extract add to milk and corn oil Buttercream (source: adapted from WendyinKK) 50 g sugar 30 g egg white 85 g unsalted butter, soft but not too soft Preheat oven to 180°C. Place paper liners in 8 muffin cups. Place muffin cups on baking tray. (Paper or cardboard moulds are good too. This recipe isn't fussy about what it's baked in.) To make cupcakes, whisk eggs, glucose and castor sugar till ribbon stage, i.e. mixture is pale and, when whisk is lifted, drips back into bowl and stays visible. Sift half of cake flour into egg mixture, moving sieve around bowl so that flour isn't clumped in one area. Gently stir just top part of eggs with whisk, till you see only a bit of flour. Sift remaining half of flour as before. Add salt. Repeat gentle mixing, this time till you don't see any flour. Stir milk, oil and vanilla extract till well mixed. Gently drizzle mixture around bowl. Mix with whisk till you don't see any oil, again stirring just top part of batter. Using spatula, scrape down thoroughly and fold till just evenly mixed. Divide batter equally between muffin cups, i.e. 27 g each. Bake 10 minutes on middle shelf till batter is risen. Transfer to upper-middle shelf. Continue baking till golden brown and slightly springy when pressed, another 5 minutes or so. Remove cakes to wire rack. Wait 5 minutes. Unmould. Serve whilst warm and top is slightly crusty. Alternatively, leave till cool and serve topped with buttercream. To make buttercream, cook egg white and sugar over low heat, whisking constantly and checking from time to time if sugar is melted by rubbing drop of mixture between fingers. When sugar is just melted, whisk on high speed mixture till thick, glossy and cold. Add half of butter. Whisk on high speed till well combined. Add remaining butter. Whisk on high speed till mixture is stiff. Pipe or spread on cupcakes as desired. Recipe makes enough for frosting 16 cupcakes, or 8 if you're a pig.

Pandan Chiffon Cupcakes (班兰戚风杯子蛋糕)

Pandan chiffon cake hot from the oven is way better than cold pandan chiffon cake.

That's a bit like saying Bill Gates is rich, or Angelina Jolie has thick lips. We all know that.

So when was the last time you had pandan chiffon cake that was still hot?

WHAT? You've always had PCC stone-cold?

Oh . . . my . . . God . . . . Oh dear, POOR YOU!

Why don't you eat the cake hot, or least warm?

Because you bake chiffon cakes in a chiffon pan, and those have to be cool before you can unmould them?

Hey, ditch the chiffon pan! Let's bake cupcakes!

Small chiffon cupcakes can be much fluffier than big chiffon cakes baked in a tube pan.

Why's that?

Because the taller and wider the cake is, the less fluffy it has to be or it'll collapse.

A pan with a tube in the middle makes the cake narrow. But the "tube cake" is very tall compared to a cupcake. It must have a denser structure than its small brother or it caves in after it's removed from the oven. Hence, it can't be as fluffy as a cupcake.

All cakes lose some of their fluffiness as they cool down. Those that have butter or coconut oil lose more because saturated fat is liquid when hot but hardens as it cools down. Pandan chiffon cakes made with coconut milk are at their fluffiest when they're still hot.

Not only is pandan chiffon cake fluffier when it's hot, it's also  more fragrant. And there's something about hot PCC, psychologically,  that makes everyone go "Wow!" and "Oooh!"

My recipe comes with a warning: the pandan chiffon cupcakes crack. If there aren't any cracks, then the cakes aren't as fluffy as they should be.

The cracks close up once the cakes are removed from the oven but you'd still see the "scars". If you like your cakes scarless, then this recipe isn't for you. Or maybe you could use icing sugar as a concealer. A bit of makeup always helps.

Do the cakes have a sunken top like Hokkaido cupcakes? No. The top should be flat or very slightly rounded, not caved in, after the dome subsides.

Once you get used to chiffon cake hot from the oven, you may never go back to eating it cold. Unfortunately, no one sells cakes hot (save for chocolate lava cake?). That means every time you want to eat chiffon cake, you have to bake it yourself. Of course, if you're smart, you get someone to bake it for you. I guess I'm not so smart since I'm the one who bakes.

PANDAN CHIFFON CUPCAKES (班兰戚风杯子蛋糕) (Recipe for 8 big cupcakes) 60 g egg yolks 25 g castor sugar 50 g corn oil 50 g young, light green pandan leaves rinse thoroughly and drain; chop roughly  75 g undiluted fresh coconut milk blend with chopped pandan leaves; press with potato ricer to yield 65 g green milk; discard pandan pulp 1/8 tsp salt 80 g cake flour ¼ tsp baking powder sift with cake flour 150 g egg whites 60 g castor sugar Measure and prep ingredients as detailed above. Line eight 180 ml moulds with parchment paper. Preheat oven to 200°C. Whisk egg yolks and 25 g castor sugar till thick and pale. Add corn oil. Whisk till well combined. Add 65 g green milk and salt. Whisk till evenly mixed. Re-sift sifted cake flour and baking powder into mixture. Whisk till just evenly mixed. Set aside. Wash whisk thoroughly. Whisk egg whites till thick. Gradually add 60 g castor sugar whilst continuing to whisk. Keep whisking till egg whites just reach firm peak stage. Add egg whites to yolk mixture in 3 batches, mixing till almost even after each batch. Scrape down thoroughly. Fold till just evenly mixed. Bang mixing bowl against worktop 3-4 times to get rid of big air bubbles. Fill moulds with batter, about 60 g each. Tap moulds gently against worktop to level batter. Bake till cakes are golden brown and slightly springy, about 20 minutes. Cakes should crack after first 10 minutes. Transfer cakes to wire rack. Wait till cracks close up, about 5 minutes. Unmould and serve.

Orange Chiffon Cake (香橙戚风蛋糕)

.
Knock knock!

Who's there?

Chiffon cake!

Chiffon cake who?

She's fond of cakes, especially light, fluffy cakes.
.

I have a recipe for another  light and fluffy cake, a chiffon this time. I hope you like orange?

To make a very orangey orange cake, you need lots of finely grated zest from the topmost, most oily part of the peel. Make sure you use a sharp grater or you'll have more of the precious orange oil on your grater than in your cake.

Before you start grating, please get rid of the nasty stuff that's sprayed on oranges. I wash mine in boiling water, then give them a good scrub and a thorough rinse under the tap.

Besides orange zest, you also need some orange juice.

If you use fresh OJ you squeeze out of oranges, you  won't taste it when the cake is freshly baked. It needs to rest  overnight or at least eight hours for the flavour to develop.

If you use "fresh" OJ you pour out of a carton or bottle,  the orange flavour is artificial even if the juice is "100% pure and  natural" and "not from concentrate". This is what I use for baking. The man-made flavour is heat-stable, so it tastes the same before and after it's baked. And it tastes like fresh OJ, which is why a lot of people don't know their store-bought fresh OJ isn't fresh at all. You're not one of these suckers, are you? 

My orange chiffon cake recipe is adapted from the pandan chiffon cake recipe I use. Because OCC is made with orange juice whereas PCC uses coconut milk, I've made four changes to the original recipe:

• The cream of tartar, an acid used to stabilize the whisked egg whites, is reduced  from ½ tsp to ⅓ tsp. Because orange juice is more acidic than coconut  milk, the batter would be too sour if I use the same amount of cream of tartar as in the original recipe. The cake doesn't rise well when it's too sour because the more acidic it is,  the quicker it sets.

• The baking powder is reduced from 1 tsp to ¾ tsp. This is necessary because the orange flavour is mild compared to coconut milk. It doesn't hide the baking powder's bitter taste as well, hence the lesser amount.

• To make PCC, corn oil is mixed evenly with egg yolks that have been whisked till thick and pale. For OCC, the corn oil is whisked with the thickened yolks till the mixture is thick once again, like mayonnaise. This helps prevent the OCC from drying out quickly in the oven. Why doesn't PCC need the same procedure? Because it has coconut milk which doesn't evaporate as easily as OJ when heated.

• OJ replaces only the non-fat part of coconut milk. To make up for the lack of coconut fat, there's more corn oil in OCC than PCC.

I like orange chiffon cake because it uses orange peel which I would have thrown away otherwise. And also because it uses corn oil which is cheaper than butter. And because it tastes of orange, which is nice. And because I like cakes that are soft and fluffy. Actually, I like dense cakes too. And also cupcakes, cheesecakes, ice-cream cakes, mooncakes, pancakes, crab cakes, fish cakes, two-way cakes . . . . Hey, there's cake on my face!

No, I'm not fat (yet), in case you're wondering.

ORANGE CHIFFON CAKE (香橙戚风蛋糕) (Recipe for one 21 cm cake) 60 g egg yolks 50 g castor sugar 80 g corn oil 65 g orange juice 100 g cake flour ¾ tsp baking powder sift with cake flour ¼ tsp salt 15 g finely grated orange zest 180 g egg whites ⅓ tsp cream of tartar 50 g castor sugar Measure and prep ingredients as detailed above. Preheat oven to 200°C. Whisk egg yolks and 50 g castor sugar till thick and pale. Add corn oil. Whisk till thick again, like mayonnaise. Add orange juice. Whisk till evenly mixed. Re-sift sifted cake flour and baking powder into bowl. Add salt and orange zest. Mix till just even. Set aside. Thoroughly wash whisk.  Whisk egg whites till very frothy. Add cream of tartar. Keep whisking till egg whites are thick. Gradually add 50 g castor sugar whilst continuing to whisk. Keep whisking till egg whites reach firm peak stage. Add to yolk mixture in 3 batches. Mix with whisk till almost even after each  addition. Scrape down thoroughly with spatula. Fold till just evenly mixed. Bang bowl against  worktop 2-3 times to remove big air bubbles in batter. Pour batter into 21 cm  loose-bottomed chiffon pan that's not non-stick, slowly so that  big air bubbles burst as they flow out of bowl. Level batter with  spatula. Run chopstick around sides of pan and knock pan 2-3 times against worktop to get rid of more big air bubbles. Place cake in bottom of oven. Reduce temperature to 180°C. Bake till cake is level with pan and slightly golden brown, about 20 minutes. Place baking tray in top of oven to block heat from top of oven. Continue baking till cake is brown and slightly springy when pressed, another 20-25 minutes, rotating as necessary so that cake browns evenly. . Remove cake from oven. Invert and rest cake elevated from worktop. Leave till cool. Unmould by cutting cake out of pan. Slice and serve.