Orange Cotton Cake 香橙棉花蛋糕

Ever since I learned the technique in baking the no-shrinkage and no-crack cotton cakes, I've been trying out the different flavours of cotton cake. Simple ingredients but can produce soft and moist cakes. This time, I'm trying out all-natural orange flavour cake :)

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 minutes, upper & lower heating

Ingredients

All ingredients in room temperature

60g eggs

40g vegetable oil

50g cake flour

3 egg yolks 

25g beaten egg

40g orange juice

1 tbsp orange zest, about 10g

3 egg whites

40g fine sugar

Direction

1. Line a 6" round cake mould with parchment paper at the base.

2. Collect 40g of orange juice and 1 tbsp of orange zest.

3. Loosen the flour and set aside.

4. Mix 3 egg yolks with the beaten egg. Then add in the orange juice and orange zest. Set aside.

5. Heat up vegetable oil till you start to see convection current appearing near the base of the oil.

Remove the oil from the stove and pour in the flour to mix into a smooth paste.

6. To avoid the warm oil batter from cooking the egg yolk mixture, let the former rest for 2 to 3 minutes.

Pour (4) into (5) and mix into a smooth paste. Cover and set aside.

7. Beat egg whites till frothy, about 30 seconds at medium speed. Add in the sugar in 3 batches.

Beat at high speed till a steady trail starts to follow the whisks of the electric mixer. Reduce speed of the electric mixer to low.

Reduce speed to lowest and check regularly.

Beat till almost stiff peak stage.

8. Fold about 1/3 of the meringue to batter in (6).

9. Pour the batter in (8) back to the remaining meringue and mix into a smooth batter.

10. Pour the batter into the cake mould. Bang the mould against the worktop to remove trapped air bubbles.

11. Place the mould into a tray filled with 1cm deep hot water.

12. Baked in a preheated oven, with only the upper heating coil turns on, at 170 degree Celsius for 40 minutes at the lower rack of the oven.

After 40 minutes, reduce the temperature to 150 degree with both the upper and lower heating, for another 20 minutes.

End of baking.

The above heating method is suitable for oven that has a relatively high base heat. The strong base heat tends to cause the cake to crack at the surface.

If your oven doesn't have the above problem, the above heating method may not be suitable to your oven.

You may consider to bake at 150 to 160 degree Celsius for about 1 hour with both upper and lower heating. This is just a guide. You may have to adjust according to your oven needs ^^

13. Remove the cake with the mould from oven and drop them to the table top from a height of about 8 cm. This is to prevent the cake from excessive shrinkage during cooling.

14. Allow the cake to cool on a wire rack for 20 minutes.

15. Run a spatula round the edge of the warm cake to dislodge it from the mould.

16. You may want to dry up the sides of the cake by keeping it in the warm oven for about 15 minutes. Turn on the oven to 90 degree Celsius for 2 minutes.

17. Allow the cake to cool down completely before cutting. 

Best serve after 2 hours of refrigeration :)