Passion Fruit Chiffon Cake

A colleague of mine was back home in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (same home town as myself) a few weeks back and she brought back some local passion fruit for me. I hardly ever buy passion fruit at all and have only used it once in my entire baking/cooking history.



As I was not too partial of consuming the fruit on its own, I decided to use it in making a dessert. You cannot imagine the number of dessert recipes and concoctions that swirled around one head. Talk about indecisiveness! It took me close to a week before I finally got to using the fruit. I ended up with something simple which was a chiffon cake. I have made chiffons before but this time round I used a chiffon pan and imagined my cake to be a deliciously soft, fluffy and high cake. Something majestic would probably be the best word to describe it. I followed the recipe pretty much to the teeth (made a few minor tweaks only). The cake batter looked exactly as it should have looked …. velvety and voluminous! I baked it at the correct temperature and timing.

Unfortunately the cake did not rise as much as I had anticipated it to. I would say that it looked like a very high cake, not a chiffon. I even used a chiffon pan with three legs to try to accomplish this task. I also turned the pan upside down to rest on its legs, as with most chiffons, until the cake was entirely cooled (I left it in this state for 2 hours). What on earth went wrong, I do not know. Having not achieved the height I had hoped, the cake did deliver on taste and texture. It was extremely soft. The chiffon had a bit of tart in it from the passion fruit as well as the lime zest and juice I had added. In addition the passion fruit seeds which I had included gave it some crunch texture. Extremely delicious I must say! I guess all was not lost after all.





Passion Fruit Chiffon Cake Recipe
Makes a 9" chiffon tube pan

Ingredients:

4 yolks
40g sugar
45g canola oil
65g passion fruit pulp (including the seeds - about 2 to 3 fruits)
20g water
1 tsp lime zest
1 tsp lime juice

100g cake flour
1/2 tsp baking powder

4 whites
40g sugar
1/8 tsp cream of tartar

Method:

1) In a bowl, sift together the flour and baking powder.

2) Whisk together egg yolks and 50g sugar until pale in colour.

3) Gradually add in oil, passion fruit pulp, lime zest and juice and water whisking them all until combined.

4) Add all the sifted flour and baking powder. Whisk until the mixture becomes a thick batter. (This should take no more than a minute)

5) Place the egg whites into a clean metal bow. Using a mixer, beat the whites until frothy. Add in the cream of tartar until whisk for a minute before gradually adding in the 40g of sugar. Continue to beat until stiff peaks are formed.

6) Gently fold in egg white mixture into egg yolk batter in 3 seperate additions until well combined.

7) Pour batter into a 9"/22cm chiffon tube pan. Bake in preheated oven at 175C for 40-45mins.

8) Invert pan immediately to cool completely before unmold.

Note: Cake flour is substituted by 90g plain flour and 10g corn flour