Orange-Mango Fresh Chiffon Cake

When we were in high school, my friends (Sybil, Rhea, Marjo, Maan and Yvette) thought how fun it would be to bake a cake together in celebration of my birthday. And so we did, or at least we tried. Somehow, something went wrong and we came up with a very hard, inedible chunk shaped like a doll (we had a molder) which we ate anyway. I guess it was pretty traumatic for me that since then, I shun the thought of even trying to bake a cake, especially if it`s chiffon cake. Somehow I thought that the process is just so complicated that I`d always end up with the same result as last time.

Which is why, when I was looking around the ABC Cooking Studio (at the Shizuoka Station) and someone came and asked if I wanted to take the 1 day (1 recipe) free lesson, I grabbed the chance and chose the Chiffon cake recipe. Perhaps, as a way to exorcise the trauma that I had over making chiffon cakes.

Rad dropped by the studio from his work to give his moral support and to document the whole thing.

This is good for 2 big cup chiffon cakes.

Ingredients for Chiffon Cake:

• 3 egg yolks
• 15 g. sugar (1 tbsp)
• 40 g. orange marmalade
• 30ml salad oil
• 30 ml 100% Orange Juice
• 60g flour
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 3 egg whites
• 25 g sugar

Directions:

Separate the egg yolk and the egg whites into two bowls. Beat the egg yolks and 15 g sugar to a certain consistency (my teacher said until it looks kinda like mayo).Add marmalade and beat. Then add salad oil, beat, then add orange juice, mix well. Sift the flour and baking powder into the mixture and beat well.

Beat the egg whites and sugar but put half the sugar first then add the remaining sugar after the first half has been integrated well with the egg whites. Be careful not to beat this mixture too much.

Mix the egg white and sugar mixture into the first mixture and this time, mix only using a spatula. Mix gently in a J-like motion. Once the two mixtures are folded well, pour into baking pan or paper cups and bake at a preheated oven at 170C for 23 mins.

Ingredients for the Cream:

• 85 g Fresh cream
• 15 g (1 tbsp) plain yoghurt
• 70 g mango
• 30 g marmalade

Direction:

Beat cream and yoghurt together. Beat in marmalade and half of the mango until desired consistency is achieved. Then mix the remaining mango using a spatula. This will give some color streaks to the cream.

Putting it all together, scoop a spoonful of the chiffon and squeeze the cream into the cake. You can put back the cake that you scooped out as a "hat" to the cream. Garnish with a slice or two of orange, a mint leaf and caster sugar.

For those who can make chiffon cake so easily, please feel free to correct me if I may have inadvertently written the wrong directions. I just copied the ingredients and wrote the directions from memory with my brain`s automatic editing.

Efficiency, politeness and full customer satisfaction guaranteed are the very characteristics of almost all Japanese services I have ever experienced. It was no different when it came to cooking school. And so after the lesson, if only I had the money then, I really would have enrolled myself in all the courses. Perhaps when time and our budget (it is really expensive) would really permit to take advantage of all of these, I will.

My cake actually looked like the one in the homepage but it turned out like that (the first picture) because we were only able to take a shot when we got home. And so we took the cake home, and just when we were about to dig in, I found out that Rad is not really a big fan of chiffon cakes. Oh well, Ken is, so it is justified. Plus, of course, my chiffon cake trauma has been exorcised. And, yep, the cake was very delicious! Not so sweet but just right to make you want for more! Mangantayon!