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Orange Chiffon Cake Recipe – Airy, light, cottony, and to-die-for orange sponge cake. You’ve got to make it!
Chiffon cake—much like angel cake in the US (but tastes better)—is one of the most popular cakes in Malaysia and Singapore.
Walk into any cake shops or supermarkets, you can always find various flavors of chiffon cake for sale.
Chiffon cake is prized for its very light, soft, and cottony texture.
Everyone loves it.
Believe it or not, I was quite a Orange chiffon cake baker when I was in high school.
During one of my high school years, I remember my eldest sister-in-law started baking chiffon cake at home.
She had learned how to bake chiffon cake from her co-worker and started testing out the recipe.
I loved pottering in the kitchen, watching the preparation and baking process.
She started teaching me her recipe.
I remember vividly she had to beat the egg whites until soft peaks formed, during which she would turn the container with the egg whites upside down to test the readiness.
She cautioned me that if the egg whites were runny, the cake would fail.
The foamy texture of the egg whites mesmerized me…I thought it was amazing that the egg whites defy gravity!
Soon after that, I started testing out her chiffon cake recipe, with great success.
While the most popular is pandan chiffon cake, I loved making orange chiffon cake.
My late aunt would always buy me oranges.
Once in a while, I would bake coffee chiffon cake and she would ask her friend from the coffee shop for some Nescafe coffee mix.
For a month or two, my favorite pass time was baking orange chiffon cake.
I loved the citrusy fragrance and the mild tangy flavor of orange chiffon cake.
As with many teenage obsessions, soon I found another hobby and I stopped baking.
Fast forward to many years later, the last chiffon cake I made was this lemon chiffon cake I posted many years ago.
If you asked me if I still remember my sister-in-law’s recipe, the answer is a clear no.
However, I am happy that my contributor CP Choong is sharing her Orange Chiffon Cake recipe with us, which brings back many memories of my high school days.
How Many Calories per Serving?
This recipe is only 537 calories per serving.
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Orange Chiffon Cake
Ingredients
- 7 egg yolks
- 1/4 cup superfine sugar
- ¼ tsp salt
- 4 tablespoons cooking oil
- 2 tablespoons grated orange rind
- 4 tbsp orange juice
- few drops of orange colouring (I omitted)
- 4 oz (125g) self-raising flour
- 7 egg whites
- ½ teaspoon cream of tartar (I substitute with 1 tsp lemon juice)
- 2/3 cup superfine sugar
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 170°C (325°F). Prepare a 9-in (22 cm) tube pan, ungreased.
- To make egg yolk batter, beat egg yolks with sugar till pale, then add in salt and oil, mix briefly till looks like mayonnaise.
- Add in grated orange rind, orange juice and orange colouring (I omitted) and mix well. Fold in sieved flour until forms batter.
- To make egg white foam, beat egg whites and cream of tartar until mixture forms soft peaks. Gradually add in sugar, beating at high speed until stiff peaks form.
- Gently fold beaten egg white foam into egg yolk batter in 3 batches until fully combined. (Do not overmix)
- Pour batter into ungreased 9-in (22 cm) tube pan. Tap the pan a few times on table top to get rid of any trapped air bubbles in the batter.
- Bake in preheated oven at 170°C (325°F) for 50-60 minutes or until cooked. (When lightly pressed, the cake will spring back)
- Immediately upon removing the cake from the oven invert the pan (turn upside down) and place on a bottle or flat surface so it is suspended over the counter. Let cool completely before removing the cake from pan.
- To remove cake from pan, run a thin bladed knife or a palette knife around the side of the pan and center core, release the cake and run the knife along the base of the pan to remove cake.
Notes
Nutrition
Notice: Nutrition is auto-calculated, using Spoonacular, for your convenience. Where relevant, we recommend using your own nutrition calculations.
This cake turned out perfectly! Easy to bake even though there are a lot of steps. My mom used to bake us kids an orange chiffon cake when we were kids many many years ago. I remember waiting for the cake to bake and we would devour the cake as soon as it came out of the oven. Your photos looked exactly like her cake. Unfortunately we lost the recipe so I had to google to find something similar. Yours is close but I still can remember hers been a little different. My sister and I remember my mom juicing a lot more oranges than your recipe calls for. Anyways I will use your recipe whenever I feel like baking an Orange Chiffon cake. Thank-you.
Hi Bee, just tried this today and whilst the taste was nice, the cake sort of “flatten out” while cooling down on the rack. Two questions :
1)Do we need to grease the pan? (I thought the instructions say not to)
2) Do we use self raising flour or cake flour? If cake flour, then how much baking soda (if at all)?
Would appreciate your reply. Thanks.
They flat out because your egg whites are not completely ready. You need to beat more until they don’t fall off the spoon when you turn down the spoon. No grease.
Thanks Rasa for sharing your recipe. This is the easiest I’ve tried, and the best. It reminds me of the orange chiffon cake I grew up with here in Hawaii.
Initially, I thought chiffon cake is the hardest cake to bake. But it changed my thinking after finding this recipe. 2nd time baking this and gonna use the same recipe and bake other Flavours. Ty so much!!
Thanks Jacqueline for trying this orange chiffon cake recipe.
Really amazing.. I can’t wait to send the result follow your recipe.. really soft and fluffy.( like cotton ). Thanks a lot Rasa Malaysia.. I am from Indonesia..
God Bless U .. :)
Thanks for trying my orange chiffon cake recipe!
Making it for the second time now. I love this recipe!
I didn’t grease my pan but this time I did. First time was a real hell to get the cake out of the pan and not damage the pan.
Hi, do you know how the recipe can be converted to smaller batches? For example, if I only wanted to bake a cake with 3-4 eggs rather than 7. Do I have to change the pan size, the oven temperature, or the baking time? If so, what should these new ratios be? Thanks!
Update: Cake turned out perfectly!! This is my favourite cake recipe now!
Omg, the softness of this cake is just magic. :D
Thanks for trying!! :)
I used less zest because my oranges gave off less than usual but I did add fresh quality orange-mango juice and I can’t wait to try it out. It is still cooling down on a bottle. ^^ It smells like oranges though!
I can tell onthe picture that you, Malaysian women are very “meticulou” in your cooking, that you’re much better than some filipina cooks online!
This cake is so ‘airy’, and has a different dimension of “finess”!
Thanks for the recipe!
Cheers!