Chinese bakery style chestnut sponge cake

This time of year has me thinking of chestnuts more than ever.  Fresh chestnuts as well as jarred and vacuum-packed versions pop up at supermarkets and specialty stores, conjuring up images of chestnuts roasting on an open fire and special chestnut desserts for the holidays.

Chestnuts are one of my favorite things. My love for them is pretty well documented here (type in "chestnuts" in the search bar) and I'd like to add another chestnut dessert to the roster today.  This time, I'm exploring a rendition of the classic chestnut sponge cake you'd find at a Chinese bakery.

I am a bonafide chocolate lover but when my birthday rolls around, I find myself picking this chestnut cake as my birthday cake.  You can buy one at a Chinese bakery and you'll find them in this identical form across Chinese bakeries - 2 layers of light as air sponge cake (chiffon cake, specifically) between a delicious chestnut paste filling, wrapped around smooth, lightly-sweetened, whipped cream.  This cake is probably where my love of chestnut first originated.  We go way back and we've celebrated many a birthday together.  

So it was with great excitement that I finally attempted to make this cake at home recently.  I knew it would be impossible to replicate the exact thing from the bakery but I am happy to say this came pretty close.  The chiffon cake layers were a tad denser than they should be but the chestnut paste filling was rather spot on!  Next time, I'd make a couple of tweaks - including using lighter cake flour for the cake layers - but this is something this chestnut-lover sees herself making again.  

Orange chiffon cake

Chiffon cakes are one of my favorite things.  So it's part of my regular programming to make one.  I was getting ready to make my favorite, a classic "plain" vanilla one, the other day when I saw an orange version from Martha.  I've always wanted to make an orange chiffon cake and since I've enjoyed other occasions where I branched out, I made the orange version.  I have no regrets!

I think of this as one big, bright, bouncy orange chiffon cake.  It's just as it should be - lofty, fluffy, light and moist.  Orange zest and fresh orange juice give it plenty of flavor so there's no doubt it's an orange chiffon cake.  Adding citrus is a small way of adding some sunshine and brightness to these winter days.  I think we can all lighten and brighten our moods a bit with our food.

This is a great cake for January, before we bring on the richer chocolate treats for February and Valentine's Day.  You are planning on making some chocolate treats, aren't you?  It's hard to believe we're already at the tail end of January already.  Once upon a time, I thought the first month of the year dragged on but as I get older, time flies out the door and vanishes somehow.  Nevertheless, there's still a few days left to the month.  If you're in the mood for cake, I'm offering this as my suggestion.

Chiffon cake

On yet another raining day, I'm in the kitchen whipping egg whites and attempting to make use of that angel food cake pan.  Working with egg whites on a humid day is probably not the smartest thing to do but armed with some cream of tartar and a determination to make my investment in that tube pan worthwhile, I was raring to go.

This time, the experiment was chiffon cake.  I was watching Cook's Country From America's Test Kitchen and they were making this cake.  And I wanted to try it because I love plain, "egg-y" cakes without any frosting.  And oh, you know the people from Cooks Illustrated, right?  Their magazine looks like a big pathlet, is essentially black & white, with no advertising, and has diagrams and drawings in place of photography.  They study and test every recipe until they've got it down to a science and then explain it to you and me.  Their food always looks amazing and I've tried a couple of their recipes with success (I follow their technique for cooking Thanksgiving turkey) but it's usually a bit too technical and complicated for me.  But this cake was easy and sounded excellent.

If you recall my angel food cake experiment, I discovered that I really didn't like angel food cake all that much.  I missed the egg yolks.  Well, the chiffon cake is one great alternative.  Here, you have both egg whites and egg yolks.  The lofty texture comes from the whites but you get the richness from the yolks.  The cake is extremely moist like a sponge cake with the use of vegetable oil and water.  I love recipes that use water.  It makes me feel like I must be eating light.  If you like pound cake, this cake is a lighter option.  Of course, you won't get quite the robust richness you'd expect from a pound cake (that comes from lots of butter) but it's still rich and satisfying.  Even my 6-year old liked this cake and he rarely likes anything that isn't chocolate or covered in frosting.

The people on that America's Test Kitchen show make everything look so easy and perfect.  The woman was able to remove her chiffon cake with all the crust intact so that the cake was beautifully browned all around.  I did not fare so well, losing quite a bit of the crust to the pan.  But more importantly though, the texture was moist and spongy (even after a few days).  The taste is light and rich at the same time.  This is definitely more my cup of tea.  I'll be making this again and maybe I'll have better luck removing that crust next time.