Orange Chocolate Chiffon Cake

Squeezing this in at the very last minute! This post was specially done up for Small Small Baker's Aspiring Bakers November Event. The theme for the month is chiffon cakes! As you may know, I love chiffon cakes as they're light, fluffy and easy on the palate. However, I haven't baked any for some time since macarons have taken over as the regulars on my blog in recent months...haha. Well, it's now time for a chiffon cake resurgence!

Throughout the month, I scoured the blogosphere and saw many interesting variations of the chiffon cake, like the mango coconut chiffon and sakura chiffon by Cosy Bake, hazelnut chiffon cake by Frozen Wings and the purple sweet potato chiffon cake by Evan's Kitchen Ramblings - all very pretty and delicious looking cakes! I toyed with the idea of making a very girly Rose Raspberry Lychee Chiffon versus a more rustic Orange Chocolate Chiffon and eventually settled for the latter. I rummaged through my baking stash, mixed up the the two different flavoured batters and got two 16cm chiffon cakes  and one mini chiffon into the oven within half an hour. Ahhh the beauty of making simple, rustic cakes like this - no fuss at all! :)

The resultant cake was soft, fluffy with a fresh orange fragrance and light chocolatey taste - perfect for breakfast or as a light-as-air midday snack! The orange zest added to the batter makes this smell so so good!

If you'd like to try it out, the recipe is listed below. Can't wait to see what the rest of the bloggers came up with this month! :)

Orange Chocolate Chiffon Cake

Ingredients:

(A)

95g egg yolks
25g castor sugar
zest of 1 small orange
pinch of salt

(B)
80g vegetable oil
80g orange juice

(C)
95g cake flour

(D)
10g cocoa powder
10g cake flour

(E)
200g egg whites
110g castor sugar
15g corn flour

Preparation:
1. Rub the zest with the sugar. Whisk together all the ingredients in (A) in a medium bowl until the sugar dissolves.
2. Add in (B) in their respective order and mix well at each addition.
3. Fold in (C) and incorporate till the mixture is smooth.
4. Divide the egg yolks mixture into two equal portions in two separate mixing bowls.
5. Mix 10g cake flour into one of the egg yolks mixture and 10g cocoa powder into the other bowl of egg yolks mixture. Whisk the mixture till well incorporated.
6. Beat egg whites in a clean large bowl until foamy. Mix together the sugar and corn flour and add in gradually into the egg whites. Beat till stiff peak form.
7. Gently fold in half of the egg whites mixture into the cocoa egg yolk mixture and the other half into the plain mixture. Mix till there are no traces of egg whites.
8. Spoon in the plain batter into three or four different corners of the tube pan, then cover with cocoa batter, layer by layer till all the batter has been used. Bake in a preheated oven at 170c for 35-40 minutes or until a skewer is inserted and comes out clean.
9. Invert the cake immediately on a wire rack and let cool before unmoulding the cake.

Yields 2 16 cm chiffon and 1 mini chiffon.