Cappuccino Kokuto Chiffon Cake

You can probably tell by now that I really like chiffon cake. I am sharing another light and yummy chiffon cake recipe in this post. This one is fairly simple but require a few uncommon ingredients. Not to worry as these ingredients can be easily replaced with more commonly available ones. Technically there are only three of them. Cappuccino powder, Okinawa brown sugar & Royce chocolate bar with nuts.

The cappuccino powder used for this recipe is an extremely fragrant flavouring powder. The smell of the powder always sends me to coffee heaven. For this cake, you can replace equal amount with any instant espresso powder or coffee powder.

I used Okinawa brown sugar as part of the sweetener for this cake. Okinawa brown sugar is known to be the world’s healthiest brown sugar. The key is in the process method referred to as kokuto. Unlike conventional brown sugar, kokuto is very rich in minerals and is treated as a health food. Okinawa brown sugar has a very maple-like flavour which I really like. Simply replace this with light brown sugar if you can’t get hold of kokuto.

I wanted bits of chocolates to dot the cake so I chopped up a bar of Royce chocolate with nuts. I used this chocolate mainly because it was available in my fridge at the time of making this cake. The chocolate contains crunchy finely ground nuts which added a bit of nutty flavour and texture without being too heavy for the airy chiffon cake. Of course this is another easy replacement. Just use 30 grams of your favourite chocolate and be sure to chop them quite tiny.

Cappuccino Kokuto Chiffon Cake

The cake

• 5 egg yolks
• 60g grapeseed oil/canola oil
• 60g whole milk
• 20g Okinawa brown sugar
• 90g cake flour
• 2 tsp cappuccino powder
• 5 egg whites
• 90g caster sugar
• 10g cornflour
• 1 tsp lemon juice (optional)
• 1 Royce chocolate bar with nuts or 30g of any other chocolate

Preheat oven to 150C. Prepare an ungreased 20cm chiffon cake tube pan.

After separating the egg whites from the yolks, place the egg whites in the refrigerator to chill. Chilled egg whites produce a finer meringue.

Chopped the chocolate into tiny pieces and place in the freezer.

Sift flour twice, then add cappuccino powder and mix well. Combine egg yolks, oil, milk and brown sugar in a bowl and mix well. Add flour mixture and mix using the zigzag method. (Refer to my previous post and this video on zigzag method.) Mix until the batter becomes sticky and lines can be seen when you lift up the whisk to draw ribbons. The lines should also disappear right away. You can set this aside now.

Make the meringue. Take out the egg whites from the refrigerator. Beat egg whites on low speed until foamy. At this point, you can add the lemon juice which aids in a smoother meringue (optional). Add one-third of the sugar and beat on medium speed (KitchenAid speed 4) until no big bubbles. You should see a smooth and shiny appearance. Now add the remaining sugar, beat on low speed first to properly combine the sugar into the meringue. Increase speed to high (KitchenAid speed 6) and beat until soft peaks form. Sift in cornflour and use the whisk to “press in” the cornflour. Continue to beat on medium speed (KitchenAid speed 4) until stiff peaks form. The meringue should be glossy. Finally, beat the meringue on the lowest speed (KitchenAid speed 1) for one minute to release any large air bubbles that might have been trapped. Now your meringue is ready to use.

Scoop one-third of the meringue into the egg yolk mixture and fold lightly until well combined. Add this mixture into the remaining meringue and fold by drawing a line in the middle with the spatula and turn towards one side of the bowl, scooping the mixture up and fold it back down. Turn the bowl as you fold so you get to mix every part of the mixture. When you lift up the spatula, the batter should flow down slowly.

Remove the chopped chocolate from the freezer and scatter over the batter. Briefly fold the chocolates into the batter.

Pour the batter into the chiffon tube pan and smooth the surface with the spatula or spoon. Tap the pan on the kitchen counter once or twice to break up large bubbles. Use a chopstick to draw horizontal lines over the top of the batter to remove surface bubbles.

Bake on the lower rack for 45-50 minutes. The cake should puff up to its maximum height and when it shrinks back a little, the cake is done. Remove from the oven.

Tap the cake on the kitchen counter once and immediately turn it over to cool completely before removing the cake from the pan. The cake should feel dry to touch and springs back when you do the finger press.