Chiffon Cakes

Failure vs Success

I baked two chiffon cakes yesterday of which one turned out a disaster, and the other ok. When mom in law took out some steamed sweet potatoes for lunch yesterday, i thought of 'stealing' half piece to bake a sweet potato chiffon cake. Alas, perhaps i had kept the mash for a while before using, and in this cold dry weather, it became harden and mixing into a smooth batter was a challenge. As a result, the small chunks of sweet potatoes sank to the bottom of the bundt tin causing unmolding tougher and hence a super ugly cake with lotsa holes.

In addition, my 7" bundt tin was also too small for the cake to expand. Unlike the previous blueberry chiffon which uses only 2 eggs, this sweet potato chiffon required 4 eggs, almost double the previous recipe. The cake expanded upwards, and cracking became very prominent because my tin was too short. Half of the cake was dense and wet, unlike how chiffon cakes should be. Nevertheless, the taste was still great and very sweet potatoish, more like a nyonya kuih i would say.

Not satisfied, i decided to try another one when back from climbing. Chose a pandan chiffon, as i had opened that tin of coconut milk and because pandan chiffon is my most favourite chiffon cake. This time, i tried using 3 eggs and the result, very good.

Due to absence of pandan leaves here, i substituted with 1 tsp of pandan essence, which also gives the cake a tint of greenish colour. Will continue to practise until i get my chiffon skills perfect!