It's tea time again! These few days I saw quite a number of blogger friends posting similar chiffon cake recipes range from Purple Sweet Potato, Green Tea with Azuki Bean, Spinach Chiffon, Pistachio & Raspberry and etc. And since I have some purple sweet potato paste leftover in the fridge after making our favourite Mantou(馒头), I decided to use the it to make a chiffon cake.
As I have run of purple sweet potato, I have no choice but to mix in some orange sweet potato cubes instead. So does this look savory to you with those "orange" cubes popping out from the top of the chiffon cake. From far you might mistook it with either pumpkin or carrot cubes too. With this bright orange cubes, it some how or rather makes me feel like baking a Carrot Chiffon Cake one of these day.
Here shows the cross-section of the Purple Sweet Potato Chiffon Cake where you can see a better view of the orange sweet potato cubes popping out in between the slices. And each slices of the cake has a lovely sweet potato taste and sweetness as well as a light aroma from the coconut milk used.
Here are some of the ingredients and steps for making this Purple Sweet Potato Chiffon Cake.Ingredients: (for 7" tube pan)
100g Cooked Purple Sweet Potato, finely mashed
1 1/2 Tablespoon Coconut Milk
20g Caster Sugar
3 Large Egg Yolks
50ml Corn Oil/Vegetable Oil
40ml Water
80g Cake Flour
4 Large Egg Whites
50g Caster Sugar
80g of Orange Sweet Potato Cubes
Method:
1. Wash and remove the skin of the purple sweet potato then cut it into cubes, steam for about 15 minutes or more over medium heat till soften, mashed it with folks while hot.
2. Transfer the mashed sweet potato into a big mixing bowl, slowly whisk in the coconut milk till it form a paste.
3. Add in egg yolks, 20g sugar and give it a quick stir using a balloon whisk before adding oil and water in sequence until everything is well combined.
4. Next slowly whisk in the sieved flour into the egg mixture till no trace of flour is found.
5. Preheat the oven to 180 degree.
6. Beat egg whites and 1/3 of the 50g caster sugar with an electric mixer until mixture becomes frothy and foamy. Add in another 1/3 of the sugar and continue to beat on medium speed until almost soft peaks form then add in the last 1/3 of the sugar and beat until stiff peaks form. (the whole process takes about less than 5 minutes)
7. Use a balloon whisk to whisk in the stiff egg white into the egg yolk batter in 3 separate additions, with the 1st addition to incorporate the whites into the yolk mixture till combined leaving no trace of whites.
8. Next add in the 2nd and 3rd addition of whites using the balloon whisk in a gentle manner in order not to knock off the air in the whites, just fold till no trace of whites and the mixture are well combined.
9. Lastly stir in 3/4 of the prepared sweet potato cubes into batter, lift up the bowl to height, pour the mixture into the tube pan and tap the pan once or twice on a table top to get rid of any trapped air bubbles in the batter.
10. Scatter the remaining sweet potato cubes on top of the batter, bake the cake in the preheated oven for about 30 minutes or when the surfaces turns golden brown. (you can insert a skewer into the centre and test if it comes out clean)
11. Remove it from the oven and invert the pan immediately to let it rest on top of a cup. Make sure it cool completely before unmould.
12. To remove the cake from the pan, run a thin-bladed knife(i use a small rubber saptula) around the inside of the pan and the center core.
13. Release the cake and run the knife/spatula along the base of the pan to remove the cake.
14. Cut into serving size and serve with a cup of tea or coffee
Note:
~ You can replace the coconut milk with fresh milk.
You can use either purple sweet potato or some orange sweet potato for better colour effect. For a quick way to get your sweet potato soften you can try the method below:-Ingredients:
80g Orange/Purple Sweet Potato Cubes
1 1/2 Tablespoon Water
Method:
1. Wash, remove the skin of the sweet potato and cut them into small cubes shown above.
2. Mix the sweet potato cubes with water together in a heatproof bowl.
3. Microwave the mixture on High for 2.5 minutes, pause and give it a quick stir every 1 minute till the cubes are soften.
4. Remove from microwave and let it cool off before coating them lightly with some cake flour so that they would not sink into the bottom of the batter.
This Chiffon is great with its light, airy and spongy texture together with some extra bits of sweet potato cubes to give some contrast effect. But there is one thing that I still cannot figure out why my purple sweet potato chiffon cake is kind of "greyish" in colour instead of brighter purple obtain from the mashed purple sweet potato :( Guess that this outcome proof the reason of why I didn't score well in my chemistry during school days :p
After making all these chiffon cakes shown using this similar recipes which I often modify to suit the ingredients I begin to love this versatile recipe that can be trusted without much setback. For some readers, chiffon cake might seen very hard to success due to the separate handling of egg yolks and whites but I can assured you that this recipe definitely work well for all conditions. Perhaps if you are keen you can always try out using a smaller tin like 17cm (7") which requires about 3 - 4 eggs depending on the recipe.If you have any good suggestions or interesting Chiffon Cake combination of ingredients do share with us so that we can explore more on these new flavour too :) And now I am submitting this post to "Aspiring Bakers #1: Chiffon Cakes (Nov 2010)", hosted by Small Small Baker at this link HERE.
:.