Banana Chiffon Cake

Finally, this is my first successful chiffon cake. :) Looking back, the chiffon cake baking journey went back a long way to the time when I still do not have a proper oven for baking. Of all the unsuccessful attempts, the cakes were dense, heavy and wet, nevertheless, still tasted great even with the texture far from being chiffony. Now that I own a proper TEKA oven, upgraded my cake mixer and finally I GET it! (with 1 small mistake - I didn't turn off the fan mode off in the last 10 minutes of baking). Sighh.....but I will not give up and I'm still happy and excited because this is the beginning of many more nice chiffon cakes to come.

I used the recipe from http://cookingcrave.blogspot.com/2009/07/banana-chiffon-cake-my-very-first-try.html. I used superfine flour and didn't use any banana essence and colouring. The cake was super soft, fluffy and moist. Hmm.....yummy! The only complaint I have about this cake is that the top is very oily and wet after cooling down, I think this is because I didn't turn off the fan mode to dry out the top crust during the last few minutes of baking. I also found that the top didn't crack as fast as my previous attempts, so I had thought that I do not need to turn off the fan mode.

With the new cake mixer and whisking the egg whites by tilting the bowl are probably the solution to my egg whites problem. I'd realize that by letting the mixer run at its pace took forever for the egg white to reach stiff peak and there was a time where I think I have overbeaten the egg whites because the egg whites (while they are stiff) are watery at the bottom. The stiff peak texture should look like below (it should be pointing to 1 direction):

The oven needs to be hot enough (at the right temperature) when the cake is put in.

The cake is rising nicely in the oven, but once it's taken out the top deflated quite a bit. Perhaps I need to try letting the door open for a few minutes before taking it out next time.

The top didn't crack much but after it's cool down, the cake deflated a bit and the side seems to move away (shrink) from the pan. Not sure if this is how it's supposed to be.

It looks a bit ugly after being unmoulded. This is actually the top because the bottom crust is not very browned, maybe I really should bake it longer.

After cutting it, the cake can't seem to stand on its own because it's very soft and light. Maybe this is how chiffon cake supposed to be...hmmm.....