This cake marks two very important milestones- it’s not only the first cake i was paid to make, it also helped me discover the wonders of cream of tartar.
You see, it all started when a friend of my mum’s, aunty K (hi!), asked if i could bake her a chiffon cake- an orange chiffon cake, in particular. Given my very limited success with chiffon cakes, i decided to do a test run of the cake (well, okay, more of my chiffon cake making techniques- the recipe had my complete and utter faith, coming from the Cake Bible no less ).
And it’s such a good thing i did. For while the cake rose and browned nicely in the oven and even cooled inverted without collapsing, slipping off the pan or any of the horrid things that can go wrong with chiffon cakes, the horror revealed itself when i gingerly removed the cake from the pan. While most of the cake was pillowy soft and fluffy, there was a hard 2″ layer- not unlike the texture of cheese rind- right on the bottom of the cake.
At first i thought it was underbaked but the plead for help i put out at Rose Levy Beranbaum’s website in figuring out when went wrong revealed that it was likely that i hadn’t beaten my egg whites enough. Then it hit me- indeed i had stopped whipping the egg whites once it was between soft and stiff peaks for fear of overwhipping the egg whites. I figured that since i was gonna fold the whites into the batter, i would be better off slightly underbeating than overbeating it.
To get over my fear of overbeating the whites, someone on the forum- whom i’m now forever indebted to- suggested i get hold of some cream of tartar- i’ve always been too cheap lazy to get it, figuring it’s one more bottle to have around the house when i can just use a bit of vinegar in place of it. Apparently with the addition of the cream of tartar, it’s almost impossible to overbeat the whites.
And it worked! My egg whites were so stiff i could tip the bowl over and it didn’t come sliding out. I was sooo pleased- you should have seen me go on excitedly about it to GT, J and Z and beaming so much you would have thought Nigel Slater just popped in for lunch at my place.
The cake baked up beautifully. To dress it up a little, i candied some orange peel and scattered them on top. The orange-infused sugar syrup came in handy as well in making sure the cake didn’t lose any moistness after spending the night in the fridge.
I was really pleased with how well received it was- i got a message later that day, raving about how moist the cake was- but even more so with my discovery of the wonders of cream of tartar.
Now i can’t wait to start experimenting with recipes involving whipping egg whites and make more macarons!
