Two Flavors Golden Pillow Cake | No Collapse No Baking Powder
Golden Pillow Cakes are everywhere on various platforms recently; it's unbelievably popular! At first, I naively thought Golden Pillow Cake was made with Golden Pillow durian, but after carefully checking online recipes, I suddenly realized it’s just chiffon cake! It’s not durian cake but instead a cake resembling a golden pillow. The most appealing aspect of Golden Pillow Cake is its appearance. Like a pound cake, it’s in an elongated shape with a neat crack down the center sprinkled with almond flakes, creating an appetizing look. The portions are usually small, around 300 grams, perfectly enough for two to three people for breakfast or afternoon tea. So, does this cake have anything different in its recipe compared to a regular chiffon cake? Overall, it’s basically the same, but there are some subtle differences. The total amount of flour (including cornstarch) in Golden Pillow Cake is slightly higher, providing stronger structural support and giving it a firmer texture than regular chiffon cakes. Additionally, some recipes add baking powder. Using baking powder in chiffon cakes isn’t unusual; you’ll find it in many Japanese recipe books. Baking powder helps the cake rise more efficiently, but since it’s an additive, home baking avoids it when possible. Can this cake be made without baking powder? The answer is yes. Though some believe baking powder lowers the difficulty, I personally think if your cake batter deflates, adding baking powder is pointless. The real key is to whip the egg whites properly to make them firm and stable, ensuring the batter doesn’t deflate, so even without baking powder, the cake can still rise beautifully. Apart from the baking powder issue, the Golden Pillow Cake recipe also includes cornstarch. Cornstarch contains no protein, and substituting low-gluten flour with it reduces the dough’s gluten. Adding cornstarch to the whipped egg whites is less common, but online explanations vary. I think the most reliable theory is that cornstarch absorbs moisture, thickening the egg white. This strengthens surface tension, indirectly making it harder to whip, which stabilizes bubbles—a similar effect as adding sugar or chilling to reduce egg white whipping. Golden Pillow Cake can be made with toast pans, but there’s a prerequisite condition. People who have baked chiffon cakes before know that non-stick molds don’t work well because the cakes contract upon cooling, failing to adhere to the mold. If you’ve seen successful Golden Pillow Cake made in a toast pan, either the pan’s non-stick coating has worn off or it has no non-stick layer. The better solution now is to purchase prefabricated rectangular paper molds. These paper molds resemble anodized molds with a coarse surface providing adhesive capabilities. The common paper mold size holds around 250 grams, and when folded into a rectangle, it measures 15cm*9cm*7.5cm, perfect for a three-egg recipe. Paper molds have benefits like no cleaning and convenient packaging, though the downside is their costliness. Since paper molds conduct heat less efficiently than metal molds, sufficient baking time ensures the cake doesn’t collapse. After baking, the cake should be inverted to cool, which helps mitigate shrinkage during cooling.
Ingredients
Steps
【Environment】Room temperature at 20°C, humidity at 43% 【Mold】Paper mold measuring 15cm in length, 9cm in width, and 7.5cm in height 【Portion】1 Original-Flavored Cake, 1 Cocoa Cake 【Storage】Store in a sealed container in the refrigerator for 2 days
We’ll start with the Original-Flavored Cake. Place butter in a warm spot to soften it into a creamy texture, then put it into a piping bag, cutting a small 5mm-wide opening for later use.
Using a whisk, mix one portion of cornstarch with low-gluten flour and another portion of cornstarch with caster sugar.
Preheat the oven to 150°C and prepare paper molds.
Separate the egg whites and yolks, ensuring no yolk or other impurities mix into the whites. Refrigerate the whites to achieve finer meringue.
In a mixing bowl, pour in milk and corn oil, then whisk them together until fully emulsified.
Sift the mixed dry ingredients into the bowl, stirring until smooth. The batter will be very thick at this stage.
Next, add the egg yolks and mix well until the batter becomes silky and smooth.
Take the egg whites from the refrigerator, add lemon juice, and start whipping with an electric mixer on medium speed. Gradually add one-third of the caster sugar (mixed with cornstarch) when the egg whites form large bubbles, small bubbles, and significant ridges. Then switch to low speed, whipping to stiff peaks, where the egg whites hold their shape firmly when the mixer is lifted.
By now, the meringue should have deep ridges. It took me about 5 and a half minutes to whip the whites.
Add one-third of the meringue into the yolk mixture and fold gently. Then pour the mixture back into the remaining meringue, folding until fully combined. The batter should have a certain stickiness.
Pour the batter into the paper mold and tap it a few times to eliminate large bubbles.
Pipe a line of butter on the surface and sprinkle almond flakes (or other nut toppings) evenly.
Place the mold on a baking rack and bake on the lower rack at 150°C for 60 minutes. If baking two cakes, extend by another 3 minutes, adjusting as needed based on your oven’s temperature difference.
When the cake rises to its peak and slightly recedes, the crack will become well-colored.
Remove the cake from the oven and tap it on the table to release heat.
Invert the cake on two cooling racks to cool completely. Side cooling isn't recommended as it may compress one side of the cake.
The method for Cocoa Golden Pillow Cake is the same as for the original flavor, except replace 7 grams of low-gluten flour with cocoa powder in the yolk batter. To stabilize the egg whites, increase the sugar to 43 grams (an 8% increase).
For decoration, use heat-resistant chocolate chips. As long as the egg whites are properly whipped, the cocoa batter will also remain fluffy.
After the cake cools completely, you can easily demold it by tearing off the paper mold.
Cutting the cake reveals a uniform pore structure that is soft and elastic when pressed.
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