Fresh & Soft – Strawberry Jam Chiffon Cake
O(∩_∩)O~ In this season, whether strawberries are 6 yuan a jin where you live or 22 a jin, you’ll still want to cook down some strawberry jam to keep on hand. Strawberry jam is beautiful, delicious, and easy to make – I strongly and wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone. Method reference from my previous recipe: [Homemade Strawberry Jam] http://www.xiachufang.com/recipe/100632163/ The inspiration for this recipe came from the Orange Jam Chiffon on page 24 of the book “Super Moist Q Chiffon Cake”. Since strawberry jam is just too delicious, I couldn’t help but experiment a bit. I happened to have some freeze‑dried strawberry powder, so I wanted to make a soft pink, super girly strawberry chiffon. But honestly, I didn’t achieve the look I had imagined. However, the flavor of this chiffon cake amazed me – it was so good it almost made me cry. Yes, I rarely use phrases like that, but this chiffon is packed with strawberry flavor, perfectly sweet and tart, and very refreshing. A friend happened to drop by right after I finished baking it and couldn’t stop praising this chiffon either. I’ve decided to put it on my secret‑weapon list; you really have to taste it to know how surprising and wonderful it is. ———— Cute divider line ———— You must use homemade strawberry jam, and it’s best if you also have freeze‑dried strawberry powder. If you really don’t have the powder, replace it with the same amount of cake flour. A great jam really has to be homemade so you can taste the real ingredients and the care that went into making it. You deserve that. Personally, I think that because there are bits of fruit in the jam, the crumb of this chiffon isn’t absolutely perfect, but it wins on taste. For flavor I give it full marks. This formula works for a standard 17 cm tube pan, an 18 cm tube pan, or a 17 cm extra‑deep tube pan. For anyone curious about which tube pan I’m using, here’s a note: I have two chiffon pans – a 17 cm shallow Asanuma tube pan and a 17 cm extra‑deep tube pan. The extra‑deep one takes four eggs and bakes right up to the top. If you use a regular‑depth pan it’ll mushroom right over the top. Most people have an 18 cm tube pan at home, which four eggs will also fill nicely, so this recipe works for all of these pans. For hand‑unmolding a tube chiffon cake, see here: [How to Hand‑Unmold a Tube Chiffon Cake] http://www.xiachufang.com/recipe/101773712/
Ingredients
Steps
To emphasize once more at the start: you must use homemade strawberry jam. The recipe link is already posted in the intro above, just click to see it.
Prep work: (1) Separate egg whites and yolks. Put the bowl of egg whites in the fridge. (2) Sift the cake flour and freeze‑dried strawberry powder together twice and set aside.
For this chiffon I’m still using the “egg‑added‑later” method. I believe everyone already knows how convenient and effective this method is. Steps are as follows: Pour the milk, vegetable oil, and strawberry jam into a bowl and whisk by hand until evenly mixed and emulsified.
Sift in the mixed dry ingredients and use a hand whisk to stir in straight lines, not circles, until there is no dry flour left. Do not stir in circles, to avoid developing gluten. (The batter will look like this when mixed – don’t be surprised, this is how it should look! At this stage it’s still very, very pink and creamy.)
Add all the egg yolks to the batter at once and use the whisk to stir in straight lines until smooth. If there are any lumps, press them out with a spatula to get a smooth yolk batter. Set aside. (This is the so‑called “egg‑added‑later” method. ~~~~(>_<)~~~~ Egg yolks, give me back my super pink batter!)
Start preheating the oven to 170°C. Add a few drops of lemon juice to the egg whites, add the sugar in three batches, whip on high speed first then turn to low, and beat to medium peaks. When you lift the whisk, the tip of the meringue should form a soft hook.
Fold the meringue into the yolk batter in three additions. First addition: Add 1/3 of the meringue to the yolk batter and use a whisk to stir in straight lines until even. (You can see the meringue is a bit on the soft side today, but that’s okay. Tube‑pan chiffon is very forgiving of meringue texture; a bit softer or stiffer both work.)
Second addition: Add another 1/3 of the meringue to the yolk batter bowl and use a spatula to cut and fold until even. When folding, remember to scrape from the bottom of the bowl and turn over thoroughly with the spatula so no yolk batter remains at the bottom.
Third addition: Pour the yolk batter into the bowl with the remaining meringue and continue to cut and fold with the spatula until evenly mixed. The photo shows how it should look when fully folded.
Close‑up: the finished batter should be thick, smooth, and airy without having deflated.
Pour the batter into the pan from a height, letting it naturally spread to fill about 80% of the pan. (I’m using a 17 cm extra‑deep Asanuma tube pan, so the batter only comes to about 60%. Because the meringue is softer today, the batter stacks less and flows more.)
Before baking, run a small offset spatula or thin knife lightly once around the bottom of the pan to even out the distribution of the batter and release air bubbles, so the surface is as level as possible. — Some people didn’t understand this step, so I specially took a photo.
Tap the pan on the counter to knock out large air bubbles. A special reminder: tube pans have removable bottoms, so when you tap the pan, press your thumbs on the chimney in the center and don’t use too much force, to avoid letting air in from the bottom. Bake in a preheated 170°C oven, lower‑middle rack, for about 45 minutes. (When the top colors, remember to cover with foil in time, otherwise it may burn, form a thick crust, or become hard, which will affect the taste.) Special reminder: If using a round (solid) pan, remember to reduce the baking temperature. Bake at 140–150°C for about 55 minutes. Insert a toothpick – not chopsticks – into the cake; if it comes out without wet batter, it’s done.
After baking, tap the pan to release excess steam, then immediately invert the pan. Once it’s completely cooled (I usually leave it overnight and unmold the next day), hand‑unmold the cake. I actually filmed a hand‑unmolding video, but this chiffon didn’t turn out pretty enough and the unmolding wasn’t great either, so I’ll record it again next time I bake it.
In the face of a flavor you can truly savor on the tip of your tongue, words are pale – only you can really feel how good it is.