Hi guys and gals, has anyone made a chiffon cake in a spring form pan from Rose’s Heavenly Cakes?  I don’t know if its just me but i cannot get the cake to stay in the pan when inverted upside down.  The spring form pan I am using is not a non stick so that’s not the reason.  Has anyone been able to duplicate the results of this cake? 

Also I just made one last night and when i cut in it half I noticed a spot that’s more condensed rather than light and airy.  Is this from under backing?  or more from poor incorporation of egg whites into batter?

Anyways, any help or advice you can offer with making this cake and being able to invert it so it doesn’t collapse would be much appritiated.

I haven’t mastered this cake yet, but I’ve baked it twice.  You can do a search for “RHC chiffon layer” if you’d like to see them.

My experience so far has been that it must be baked in a silver pan with no coating (which it sounds like you’re doing).  It must also have cake strips covering all the height of the side of the pan, and I think it may need to cool with the cake strips still on.  If you have a rack underneath the pan during cooling, as is shown in the picture, the cake won’t fall very far and will still be tender and delicious, just a bit smaller and denser from the shrinking.  I’ve made both a tangerine version and a lemon version.

Good luck, and please report back on your results if you try it again.

So i went back and made this cake again (for the third time).  I was looking at the picture in the book and I believe I’m using the same pan Rose used, but yet this time the cake still didn’t stick to the cake.  But I did however make a couple changes than the last two times I made it and I think it really made a difference.  Even through the cake did not stick in the pan when i inverted it, it still was tall rather than sink in which is better than my last two times I made it.  I’m pretty happy with this one but still trying to figure out how to get it to stick in the pan.  I was wondering if using bleached AP flour makes a difference.  Cause i think rose calls for unbleached.  and I know bleached flour makes the flour softer so makes me wonder if the same amount of flour doesn’t have enough structure for the cake when inverting it.  Any ideas? Think if i increase the amount of AP flour it may work.  The only bad thing though is i don’t know if i want to make a fourth cake, that’s a lot of eggs I’ve went through in the last 3 days.

Dachie:

Check your private messages.

dachie, Rose says that this is a tricky cake and that every detail has to be followed exactly in order for it to work.  If you used bleached AP instead of unbleached, that would be a pretty significant departure from the recipe.

Good luck.

well its been a while, I have started using unbleached all purpose flour and my cake finally stays in the pan all the time.  My problem now though is that my sides pull away from the pan a lot making the bottom wider than the top.  Has this happened to anyone else?  I was wondering if I’m not baking it enough…I’m so frightened of over baking.  I noticed that my top doesn’t get that nice color i’ve seen other cakes get.  Mine is still pale even if the inside is cooked.  Does the sides tend to pull away if the cake is slightly under baked?

dachie - 20 August 2011 02:52 AM

My problem now though is that my sides pull away from the pan a lot making the bottom wider than the top.  Has this happened to anyone else? 

Yup.  I’ll be honest I haven’t totally figured this one out yet.  It seems to me that this can happen with both underbaking and overbaking.  I use homemade cake strips to totally cover the sides, and I recentely read something that made me wonder if I had too much insulation from the strips- either too much water or too much paper towel or both.  I’ll have to try again soon.