Friday, August 12, 2011
My favourite GF flour blend and my favourite chiffon recipe are being combined and undergoing rigorous testing. To see how versatile my blend is, I tried it in my chiffon cake recipe.
The batter looked good as it baked in the oven.
The chiffon seemed to have more lift than my regular chiffon recipe using cake flour. The GF blend does not contain gluten…possibly an important component that provides structure to a chiffon cake batter. Gulp!
Upon taking the chiffon out of the oven, I was immediately struck by how quickly the cake began to deflate.
Right before my eyes, the cake shrunk down. I thought I should turn it upside down to help maintain the structure…
GF FAIL!
Well, turning the GF chiffon upside down seemed to help it along in its collapse.
Let me say this first: this vanilla bean chiffon tastes amazing! The crumb is extremely moist without being gluey; it is tender, spongey and light and my family ate the sad looking flop in a day. Everyone loved the taste. Everyone loved the texture. Too bad it looked like a fallen souffle.
The cake had puffed up high in the oven. After about 2 minutes out of the oven, it started to deflate rapidly; shrinking from the sides of the pan. The crust of the cake stuck to the pan and the inner part of the cake separated from the crust…a weird looking scenario. We ate the crust and inner part of the cake separately. It was delicious! Too bad it didn’t look very good.
I am going to try increasing the amount of flour in the recipe next time. I weighed all my ingredients so it will be easy to play with the numbers. I am worried about the lack of structure because of the missing gluten. Perhaps I may bake it longer and I may reduce the liquid in the recipe bit by bit. Much to tweak but I want to maintain the excellent moist texture and flavour.
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