Homemade Green Tea Chiffon Cake

I realize my Saturday is always a food post. Forgive me my friends, Saturday is a perfect day to chill but also a perfect day to make my husband a guinea pig of what I am going to make. * Evil Smile

Anyway, this happened last Saturday when my beloved friend, Ling came to have a stayover! Ling was my long time uni-mates and one of the very few closed ones who is still staying in Melbourne. We used to share a room during last year in University and we had a very cute name for our house  - Cherry de Sanctuary. Not sure why we call our home this name but these are good old memories, fun and crazy ones. How much I missed them! Now that two of the housemates are back to Indonesia, it is only me and Ling here. We recently had a catch up and since hatched an idea of staying over and watching horror movies together. (Trust me, I am not a fan of horror movies, but both Ling and my husband are and I am sort of forced into it!! Someone saved me out of this please)

So, this was the second time we were doing this. She was sleeping over for horror movies and we would cook dinner together. And the menu was homemade chai tao kuey!! If you are not so sure what this is about, you can check out my previous post. Ever since I made it oh-so-clear-until-it-is-not-hint anymore since last post that I was craving for this, my husband put on his chef hat and decided to once again make the fried carrot cake for me! Yay for craving satisfied!

Once we had this dish, it made sense for a sweet dish right? Times like this call for my baking sense. I decided to make the green tea chiffon cake that I used to make a lot quite a while ago and I want to share this recipe because this is really nice and easy to make!

My inspiration to bake chiffon cake comes from this:

Back in Malaysia, this is pretty much the cake you will see it everywhere. It was very light and spongy and oh-so-airy-and-nice. Don't take them for granted lol. It is not easy to find them in Melbourne!! I wonder why it is so but the cakes here are mostly very dense cake like cheesecakes or chocolate cakes that both of us don't particularly enjoy. We really miss the chiffon cake back home and this is when I 'shopped' around the chiffon cake recipe on Google before finally deciding this site as my ultimate secret weapon for chiffon cake recipes.
  
Based on your cake pan size, you can find the recipe and tips here. This site provides a lot of baking tips which helps me in baking my chiffon cake. I would have never known that having the correct cake pan is so important. I baked dense cake before and it is ok to grease but NOT for chiffon cake. There are certain tips to learn so it is best to go to this site first before you attempt to bake a chiffon cake yourself!

SO my recipe is this based on my cake pan:

 

The only changes I make to this is to reduce the sugar and oil. I always reduce the sugar and oil for the cakes I bake. For sugar, I cut it down to 120g and it works out to be the sweetness that we both like! For oil, I cut it down to 60ml instead.

Since it is homemade, so try to be healthy no?

Step 1: Prepare the ingredients. Separation between the egg yolks and egg white is the hardest part for me. REMEMBER, your egg white mixture cannot have any moisture or egg yolk at all, if not the egg white will not rise.

Step 2: Pour the oil and water into the egg yolk mixture. Whisk them together.

Step 3: Sift the flour into the egg yolk mixture. Add the matcha powder in after that.

Step 4: Whisk them together until even.

Step 5: This is my favourite part - to beat the egg white until it is stiff, the same technique to make meringue too. When it forms a stiff peak like the last picture, I know pretty much this cake will succeed haha. This step is very important which is why you cannot have single oil (egg yolk) or water in this egg white mixture.

Step 6: Then it is the forearm exercise to fold the egg white into the matcha mixture! (Forgive my expression there lol)

Step 7: Pour them into the cake pan.

Step 8: Baked for 30 minutes and then it is all done! This time round mine has cracks on top. I have to investigate further which steps contribute to this haha. But it is ok, still taste super nice haha.

It does not look nice since it cracked this time but still, it is the perfect airy cakes that we both craved for! I baked this quite a number of time and it seldom failed haha. My husband loves sponge cake and chiffon cake so I am quite happy we find this recipe to satisfy our cravings once in a while. Best part of all, it is not that sweet. I really love desserts that are not THAT sweet though.

I know you might shout and judge me because what sort of desserts are not sweet but hey, you can really enjoy the dessert that is not that sweet, just like this cake!

Do try it out and let me know how it goes! By the way, you can also modify the recipes to become orange chiffon cake, earl grey, coffee, etc. by replacing the water (to orange juice lets say) and matcha powder! I have modified this recipe and they all turned out great. Our favourite is still the green tea ones though.
Till then! See you next time!!