Tag Archives: chiffon cake

Natty’s Glazed Honey Chiffon Cake

12 Sep

Honey glazed chiffon cake

Last year at this time I came across a wonderful website from Australia called the Monday Morning Cooking Club. They have a lot of great recipes on their website and have also published a cookbook, The Feast Goes On, available through Amazon.

One of their signature recipes is this delicious Glazed Honey Chiffon Cake. It’s lighter than the usual Rosh Hashanah honey cake because it uses tea instead of coffee as the liquid and calls for whipping the egg whites.

The club ladies gave me permission to use the recipe (I adapted it slightly to meet American standards and terms) and this photo of Natanya, one of their members.

Ingredients:

CAKE
6  eggs, separated
175 g (⅔ cup) superfine sugar
275 g (¾ cup) honey
¾ cup light olive or grapeseed oil
¼ cup strong black tea
1½ cups all-purpose flour
¾ tsp. salt
2¼ tsp. baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda

GLAZE

80 g (½ cup) confectioners’ sugar
½ lemon, juiced (or 2 Tbs. lemon juice)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. You will need an angel cake (tube) pan that is not non-stick and has a removable base. Do not grease it.

Whisk the egg whites until soft peaks form. Slowly add half the sugar and continue whisking until the egg whites are stiff but not dry.

In a separate bowl, beat the yolks and the remaining sugar until light and pale. Add the oil and keep beating for a couple of minutes until well combined.

Sift the flour with the baking powder, baking soda and salt. Mix the honey into the hot tea. Add these to the egg yolks, alternating wet and dry, beating gently until fully combined.

Gently fold the egg whites into the flour mixture with a metal spoon, until just mixed through.

Pour the mixture into the cake pan and bake for 50 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 320 degrees and bake for an additional 10 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.

After removing the cake from the oven, immediately invert it to cool by balancing the middle funnel onto a bottle neck. The cake will be dangling upside down. (If your tube pan has feet, or if the funnel is higher than the sides of the pan, you don’t have to use a bottle.)

When completely cool, run a knife around the outside of the cake and the funnel. Lift the base out of the pan, then use the knife to ease the cake off the base.

To make the glaze, add the lemon juice (a few drops at a time) to the confectioners’ sugar until you have a thick, smooth paste. Pour over the cooled cake.

Serves about 12

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Passover Chiffon Cake

8 Apr

Passover Sponge CakeOK, I lied — I told you last week that there would be no blog this week because of Passover. That’s because I was so fermisht by a 10-day visit to my daughter and her family in New Jersey that I got my dates confused. Obviously, this week is not the Passover holiday. I thought I had prepared and scheduled enough blogs ahead of time so that I wouldn’t have to do one today, which is my first day back home. But I miscalculated by a week.

So I hope you’re pleasantly surprised to receive another Passover recipe today. Next week there will be no blog because of Passover.

You may already have a favorite Passover sponge cake recipe, but if you don’t you may want to try this one. We tried several before settling on this one, which I like because it’s very light, fairly moist and slightly lemony. It also keeps very well, if you wrap it tightly in plastic.

If you don’t observe Passover, just skip this week’s recipe — no one in his or her right mind would make a Passover cake unless they had to!

A few important things to remember when you make a sponge cake: Make sure your tube pan is completely clean and dry before you pour in the batter. Don’t open the oven door until it’s time to take the cake out of the oven; the movement may cause the cake to fall. And don’t be tempted to bake the cake for less than the recommended baking time. The cake may look done, but if it’s a little underdone, it will break and fall out of the pan when you turn it upside down to cool.

Ingredients:

1 cup matzo cake meal
¼ cup potato starch
1½ cups sugar
1 tsp. salt
½ cup vegetable oil
8 large or extra-large eggs at room temperature, separated
½ cup water
¼ cup lemon juice
1 Tbs. grated lemon rind

Directions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. Make a well in the center and add the oil, egg yolks, water, lemon juice and rind, in the order named. Beat until very smooth, about 5 minutes at medium speed on electric mixer.

Beat egg whites until very, very stiff. Gradually fold egg whites into the yolk mixture very gently, until all traces of white are mixed in. Do not stir.

Pour into ungreased 10-inch tube pan. Bake for 70 minutes.

Invert tube pan on a large plate or flat surface. If the pan has no “feet” on the top rim, invert it so it rests on a bottle or funnel. Cool completely. Loosen the edges of the cake with a knife or spatula.

Serves 12 to 16

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