Condensed Milk Mocha Cotton Cake 咖啡可可炼乳棉花蛋糕

This is another great recipe I adapted from Sharon's <幸福之味>.  To me, plain coffee and cocoa taste bland without milk. Therefore, in this recipe condensed milk and butter were used to bring out the aroma of these robust ingredients in the cake. In spite of the long baking time, the cake tasted moist and soft as it was steam-baked.

Yield: one 15 cm round cake

Cake mould: 6" round cake mould

Baking temperature & time:

170 degree Celsius for 40 minutes with only upper heating, lower rack.

Reduce to 150 degree Celsius for 20 to 30 minutes, upper & lower heating

Ingredients

All ingredients in room temperature

60g eggs

40g cake flour

3 tsp instant coffee powder

7g cocoa powder

3 egg yolks 

1 egg

40g unsalted butter

50g condensed milk

Pinch of salt

3 egg whites

40g fine sugar

1 tsp icing sugar for sprinkling

Directions

1. Line a 6" round cake pan with a small piece of parchment paper if you are using a fixed base cake pan. This is to facilitate removal of cake from the pan.

You may omit this step if you are using a 6" removal base cake pan. But need to wrap the base with aluminum foil.

2. Add instant coffee powder and cocoa powder to top/cake flour to make up a total mass of 50g. Mix and loosen the flour mixture using a hand whisk. Set aside.

3.  In a separate bowl, blend 3 egg yolks with one whole egg.

4. Heat butter till you see small bubbles start to form at the bottom of the melted butter.

Do not over heat the oil as we don't want the melted butter to fry the flour.

5. Remove the bowl of warm melted butter from the stove, add in the flour and fold till smooth paste formed.

6. Mix in the condensed milk.

7. Add (6) to (3) , and mix into a smooth batter.

Ensure the mixture (6) is not too hot before adding to the egg mixture, to avoid cooking the egg mixture.

8. Mix in a pinch of salt. Cover and set aside.

9. Beat egg white till frothy, for about 30 seconds. Add in the sugar, in 3 batches.

10. Beat at medium high speed at the start and reduce to low speed towards the end of the process. Beat the meringue till almost reaching the stiff peak stage. The standing meringue has a slight dip at the tip.

11. Scoop about 1/3 of the meringue into the batter at (8). Fold to combine.

12. Pour the batter back to the remaining meringue and fold to mix into a smooth batter.

13. Pour the batter into the 6" round cake mould. Lightly bang the cake mould a few times to remove any trapped air bubbles in the batter.

14. Place the cake pan in a tray of 1cm-deep hot water. 

Steam-bake the batter in a preheated oven set at 170 degree Celsius with only the upper heating coil for 40 minutes at lower rack of the oven. 

After 40 minutes, reduce the oven temperature to 150 degree Celsius with both upper and lower heating, for another 30 minutes*.

If the cake brown too fast, covers it with an aluminum foil.

* If you use smaller than 60g egg, you may need about 20 instead of 30 minutes. If the cake stop rising, the cake is about done.

Oven temperature and baking duration may differ based on individual oven.

End of baking.

15. Remove the cake from the oven. 

Immediately drop the cake with the mould from a height of about 7 to 8cm for 3 times. This helps to prevent the cake from over shrinking during cooling.

16. Cool the cake in the mould on a cooling rack for about 20 minutes. 

While the cake is still warm, runs a silicon spatula along the edge of the cake. Remove the cake from the cake mould and cool down on a wire rack. This is to prevent accumulation of moisture at the base of the cake.

17. You may want to dry the sides of the cake by keeping it in the remnant heat of the oven for about 20 minutes. Or, turn on the oven to 90 degree Celsius for 2 minutes, then let the cake stays for 15 minutes.

18. After the cake has completely cooled to room temperature, slice the cake and sprinkle icing sugar over the top.

19. The cake is best serve after refrigerated for 2 hours :)

Great appreciation to the recipe I adapted from

http://xingfuzhiwei.blogspot.sg/2015/04/blog-post_10.html?m=1