Chocolate Chiffon Cake

Post by The FTC Team:

Today we’ve decided to take a shot at baking a chocolate chiffon cake! It’s the perfect cake for those of you who prefer light, healthy cakes, a stark contrast to rich and indulgent chocolate cakes that are often more popular. We’ve heard a lot about chiffon cakes collapsing at the end of the baking process so we were really taking all precautions to make sure that it wouldn’t fall – and it was a success! The cake was worth all our efforts; each bite into the chiffon cake promises the subtle hint of chocolate and the characteristic light and fluffy texture is just perfect. Enjoy this healthy delicious cake!

Recipe adapted from Nigella's website

Ingredients: 

2 cups plain flour

2 tablespoons of cocoa powder

1.25 cups of sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon bicarbonate soda

2 teaspoons cream of tartar

1 pinch of salt

5 large eggs

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup water

1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

1. Sift flour, cocoa, sugar, bicarb, baking powder, salt and 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar together.

2. Separate eggs. Mix egg yokes, water, vanilla and oil, beat this with a fork and add to dry ingredients, mix well and set aside.

3. Beat egg whites until white and frothy and then add ½ teaspoon cream of tartar. Beat until white and peaky. The cream of tartar would help the egg whites to firm up a little more.

4. Pour the chocolate mixture into the middle of the egg white mixture and gently fold two together. Do not beat! (It should look like chocolate mousse) 

Folding is done to retain the light and airy quality of the egg whites - this gives the chiffon cake its fluffy texture. Thus, be really careful when handling the beaten egg whites!

Yummy chocolate mousse-like mixture(we had to resist eating it like this).

5. Pour mixture into a cake pan(preferably chiffon cake pan). 

6. Place in oven for 1 hour at 160ºC.

7. Cool in pan upside down to prevent the cake from collapsing. Remove from pan gently after cake has cooled.  

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The special feature of this cake is its lack of butter - this causes the cake to be less dense. The completed cake should be aerated with lots of tiny little holes - these are the air bubbles in the cake batter previously. Here is a professional looking macro shot(hehe) of the chiffon cake:

A good cake/bread should fluff right back up even after you've compressed it. Regardless of the type of cake/bread you made, try out this test! 

We hope you'll enjoy this recipe. It was really light, delicious and chocolatey. This cake is low on the calorie-count, so you can definitely forget those calories!!!

Love,

The FTC Team