Steamed Neapolitan Cake 三色蒸蛋糕

A light vanilla steamed cake with Nutella and beetroot flavoured patches. This beautiful cake was an inspiration from Veronica's Neapolitan spongecake posting in her blog a few days ago. To avoid using my oven to bake in an air-conditioned house, I steamed the cake instead :)

 

Yield: One 14cm round cake

Ingredients:

75g top/cake flour

50g fresh milk, room temperature

15g condensed milk
10g vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 egg whites, room temperature
60g fine sugar

2 egg yolks

1 tsp Nutella 

1/8 tsp beetroot powder*

1/2 tsp water*

* the beetroot paste can be replaced by strawberry/raspberry flavour, or red food dye.

材料

2粒 蛋，蛋白蛋黄分开

60ｇ 细糖

50ｇ鲜奶

15ｇ炼奶

10ｇ食油

75ｇ低筋面粉

1／8小匙 泡打粉

1 茶匙 榛子酱

1/8茶匙 甜菜根粉*

1/2茶匙 水*

*甜菜根糊可由草莓/覆盆莓香精，或食用红色素取代

Directions

1. Line a 14cm round cake pan with parchment paper. Wrap the base with aluminum foil if you are using a removable base pan.

2. Loosen top/cake flour using a hand whisk. Set aside.

3. Mix fresh milk, condensed milk, oil and vanilla extract in a small bowl. Set aside to return to room temperature.

If you are using cold ingredients to prepare, you may have to extend the steaming time.

4. In a clean and dry stainless steel mixing bowl, beat egg white till frothy. Add in fine sugar in three batches, beat at medium high speed, till firm peaks formed. Towards the end of the whipping, gradually reduce the speed to low.

5. Add in the egg yolk, one at a time. Whip till the pulled up batter can stay on the batter for more than than 5 seconds.

6. Add in the flour mixture (2) and milk mixture (3) in alternate sequence. Starting with flour and end with flour. 

Do not over mix the batter, or you'll end up with a tough cake.

7. Take about 1/2 of the batter from (6) and add to two small bowls each containing Nutella, and beetroot paste.  Mix well.

8. Pour the milk, Nutella and beetroot batters into the prepared cake pan in alternate sequence.

For the final layer, drizzle the Nutella and beetroot batters in a few spots.

Finally, run a chopstick, touching only the surface layer, to draw the swirl pattern.

Bang the cake pan against the work top to get rid of trapped air parcels.

8. Steam the batter in a pre-heated pot of hot water at medium high heat for 5 minutes. Then reduce the temperature to to low, and steam for about 13 to 15 minutes, or till an inserted cake tester came out dry.

When the cake starts to plateau, lower the heat and continue till the cake is cooked.

The cake is ready when an inserted cake tester came out dry.

9. Remove the cake from the pot, drop it from a height of about 5cm to a kitchen  cloth, and let the cake cool down in the pan for 5 minutes.

Remove the cake from pan, and let it cools down on a wire rack.

10. When the cake has cooled down, slice and enjoy :) 

Recipe inspiration from Veronica's posting

http://mintyskitchen.blogspot.com.au/2015/10/neapolitan-marble-sponge-cake.html?m=1