Can You Guess What Kind of Chiffon Cake This Is?

Beer Chiffon Cake

Thank you so much for guessing, everyone! :D Yes, some of you guessed right. I used BEER!

I copied this beer chiffon cake recipe from the same recipe book when I copied the lime chiffon cake recipe. It inspired me a lot, but I hesitated to try it out because it said “boil 350 mL of beer down to 20 mL.” Gee! How many hours would it take?! So I waited until my busy time of the month was over so that I can spend enough time in the kitchen to make this cake.

To my surprise, it really didn’t take long to boil down the beer. The beer turned into this thick, caramelized liquid (left photo, in the glass) a lot quicker than I had expected. Since the recipe recommended to use flavorful beer, I avoided happoshu (low-malt beer) and chose this all-malt beer instead. The aroma from the boiling beer filled my kitchen, and though I can’t say I loved it, it wasn’t unpleasant at all.

Then I found that I did something stupid... as usual. When I copied the recipe from the book, I noticed that the basic procedure was the same as lime chiffon cake, so after copying the part about preparing the beer, I just put, “same procedure as lime chiffon cake” to save my trouble. But I stumbled into this question: “When should I add the beer to the batter?” because the lime chiffon cake recipe, of course, didn’t say anything about that. Finally I decided to add the caramelized beer to the batter at the point when the lime rind and juice were supposed to be added in the lime chiffon cake recipe. I don’t know if that was a right decision or not, but the cake rose alright and didn’t fall miserably, so I guess it was OK.

And I’m proud to show you this photo (above). See how I removed the cake from the pan this time?! The secret is the tool they call “chiffon knife” here. Yes, I finally bought one, and now even an obachan like me can do a good job like this. Yay!

IIRC, the recipe said the beer chiffon cake is very good with loosely whipped cream, so I gave it a try, too. But to be honest, I think it tasted the best when I tried the test batch while it was warm without whipping cream or sugar dusting. (When I bake a chiffon cake, I always scale the recipe in half but still I have some batter left in the bowl after filling my 8 cm chiffon pan. So I bake it in a paper muffin cup as a test batch.)

I guess beer chiffon cake would be my favorite if I can find the right beer for it. Yebisu wasn’t bad, but I would love something more bitter. If you have baked beer cake before and recommend any particular beer, please let me know. :)


Categories: Sweets