A chiffon cake is a very light

cake Cake is a flour confection usually made from flour, sugar, and other ingredients and is usually baked. In their oldest forms, cakes were modifications of bread, but cakes now cover a wide range of preparations that can be simple or elabor ...

made with

vegetable oil Vegetable oils, or vegetable fats, are oils extracted from seeds or from other parts of edible plants. Like animal fats, vegetable fats are ''mixtures'' of triglycerides. Soybean oil, grape seed oil, and cocoa butter are examples of seed ...

, eggs,

sugar Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose Glucose is a sugar with the Chemical formula#Molecular formula, molecul ...

flour Flour is a powder made by Mill (grinding), grinding raw grains, List of root vegetables, roots, beans, Nut (fruit), nuts, or seeds. Flours are used to make many different foods. Cereal flour, particularly wheat flour, is the main ingredie ...

baking powder Baking powder is a dry chemical leavening agent, a mixture of a carbonate or bicarbonate and a weak acid. The base and acid are prevented from reacting prematurely by the inclusion of a buffer such as cornstarch. Baking powder is used to increas ...

, and flavorings. Chiffon cakes (as well as angel food or Michelle cake,

sponge Sponges or sea sponges are primarily marine invertebrates of the animal phylum Porifera (; meaning 'pore bearer'), a basal clade and a sister taxon of the diploblasts. They are sessile filter feeders that are bound to the seabed, and a ...

, and other foam cakes) achieve a fluffy texture by having egg whites beaten separately until stiff and then folded into the cake batter before baking. Its aeration properties rely on both the quality of the

meringue Meringue ( , ) is a type of dessert or candy, of French cuisine, French origin, traditionally made from Whisk, whipped egg whites and sugar, and occasionally an acid, acidic ingredient such as lemon, vinegar, or potassium bitartrate, cream of t ...

and the chemical leaveners such as

. Chiffon cake can be baked in a tube pan or layered with fillings and icings. In the original recipe, the cake tin is not lined or greased, which enables the cake batter to stick to the side of the pan, giving the cake better leverage to rise, as well as support in the cooling process when the cake is turned upside down to keep air bubbles stable.

Characteristics

The high oil and egg content create a very moist cake that does not tend to harden or dry out as traditional

butter cake A butter cake is a cake in which one of the main ingredients is butter. Butter cake is baked with basic ingredients: butter, sugar, Egg (food), eggs, flour, and leavening agents such as baking powder or baking soda. It is considered one of the q ...

s might. This makes it better-suited than many cakes to fill or frost with ingredients that need to be refrigerated or frozen, such as

pastry cream Custard is a variety of culinary preparations based on sweetened milk, cheese, or cream cooked with egg or egg yolk to thicken it, and sometimes also flour, corn starch, or gelatin. Depending on the recipe, custard may vary in consistency from ...

ice cream Ice cream is a frozen dessert typically made from milk or cream that has been flavoured with a sweetener, either sugar or an alternative, and a spice, such as Chocolate, cocoa or vanilla, or with fruit, such as strawberries or peaches. Food ...

. The lack of butter, however, means that chiffon cakes lack much of the rich flavor of butter cakes. File:Chiffonjf1939.JPG,

Hokkaido is the list of islands of Japan by area, second-largest island of Japan and comprises the largest and northernmost prefectures of Japan, prefecture, making up its own list of regions of Japan, region. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaidō fr ...

cake, a chiffon cupcake filled with cream, French Baker (

Philippines The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...

) File:Lemon Chiffon Cake.jpg, Lemon chiffon cake

History

The recipe is credited to Harry Baker (1883–1974), a

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

n insurance salesman turned caterer. Baker kept the recipe secret for 20 years until he sold it to

General Mills General Mills, Inc. is an American multinational corporation, multinational manufacturer and marketer of branded ultra-processed consumer foods sold through retail stores. Founded on the banks of the Mississippi River at Saint Anthony Falls in ...

, which spread the recipe through marketing materials in the 1940s and 1950s under the name "chiffon cake", and a set of 14 recipes and variations was released to the public in a

Betty Crocker Betty Crocker is a brand and fictional character used in advertising campaigns for food and recipes. The character was created by the Washburn-Crosby Company in 1921 to give a personalized response to consumer product questions. In 1954, Gener ...

pamphlet published in 1948.

References

External links

* {{Cakes Californian cuisine American cakes

Characteristics

History

See also

References

External links