ABC: Orange Chiffon Tweed Cake with Milk n' Honey Sabayon
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Yesterday I became an aunt (indirectly, since this was from Tom’s side of the family). This perfect little baby girl that we all be waiting for decided that 12:11am was a good time to make her way into the world.
Do you know what we were doing at 12:11am yesterday?
Tom and I were cutting into this cake to have a taste. From this day forward I will officially call this cake “Sienna’s Birthday cake” in honor of my new niece.
Way to go kid, being born when you aunt Monica was busy baking. You and I are going to get along just fine.
I never have been a fan of foam cakes. Chiffon, Angel food cakes were always “lacking” for me in flavor. Since this type of cake does not have butter, it lacks much of the rich flavor of butter cakes, and in most cases they are typically eaten with “something”, a flavorful sauce or other accompaniments, such as chocolate or fruit filling.
So there was no appeal for me at all with this choice. It did not help matters, that the last couple of days have given me a total beating and I been tired and cranky and simply not up to baking. But, I’m a sucker when it comes to promises and commitments. Not to mention the fact that this cake was being heavily promoted by Hanaa, Shandy and Faithy. I got tweets, and emails and facebook messages to “DO THIS CAKE!” “DON’T PASS THIS CAKE BY!”
With all that advertising, I was intrigue – I mean how special can an Angle food cake be?
I got to say I was a bit afraid of this cake. The factor of baking this and then turning it upside over the neck of a bottle and left suspended there for over 3 hours of cooling time had me full of butterflies and doubts. I had visions of the cake falling off the pan, into a full puddle on the counter top – a la Marie.
Not good.
And you know what they said about transferring your fears into the food you are baking right?
But, the tweets and facebook messages keep coming from the other bakers and I just could not resist. So Tuesday night, Arm with tips from Hannaa, I started baking.
This cake it pretty easy to put together – no major twist and turns, unlike the previous Pineapple pudding (yes, I’m still mad at it) And since I have a huge mentality of pre-prepping everything before hand, once I had all the ingredients out, measured and in place, it was all a matter of whipping, adding and folding – took me about 20 minutes or so.
At the 30 minute mark, my house smelled so good. The strong orange and chocolate flavor was working its way through the house and it was driving Tom and me crazy. This cake was going to be good.
At the 45 minute mark, it was still not ready and I got worry. I put another 10 minutes and hoped that the whole thing would not burn.
We got lucky, the cake came out of the oven and the moment of truth was upon me. Turning the whole thing upside down and hang from the bottle neck. I took another route and had previously noted that Flo suggested the use of a metal funnel instead of the bottle. I went searching and was surprise that I had one in my kitchen ( note to self: clean drawers!). Out it came and after counting to ten, I flipped the whole thing over it and closed my eyes.
Counted to ten again, and open them to find it suspended and holding. YIKES! The damn thing held!
I did a little bit of kitchen dance, held my arms overhead and scared the dogs to death when I shouted on top of my lungs – VICTORY!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yes, I do get carried away sometimes. Don’t judge.
Now it was just a matter of waiting the 3 hours for the whole thing to cool off.
I was too tired to continue on and do the Sabayon, regardless of the high praises by all the fellow ABC bakers. So, I called it a day and figure that I will mark it for future doing.
And that is why Tom and I found ourselves having a taste at the midnight hour.
Verdict
Tom: “It’s good and very airy and I’m surprise that the orange comes thru and the chocolate does not overpower the flavor. You do have to the Sabayon, it’s probably better with it.”
Me: I like it, I’m not a fan of the orange-chocolate combo, but here it works. And Tom is right; I’m going to have to do the sabayon for it, because while the cake is really good on it’s own, it totally screams for it to be eaten with something else to compliment it.
If you’re a Flo Braker fan, or you enjoy baking, and you have easy access to her book, “Baking for all Occasions”, feel free to join our monthly baking group. Just email HanaasKitchen [at] live [dot] com. If you want to buy the book you can get it here
Reader Comments (8)
Awwww congratulations, Monica!! And what a lovely name, Sienna. One of my friends' daughters is also named Sienna (I made her cupcakes for her 1st bday). Onto the cake, I'm glad you didn't skip it. It looks beautiful. Your cake too had a nice rise! Best of all, I'm glad you and Tom liked it. I like to eat the cake plain for breakfast and eat it with my Sabayon pastry cream for dessert, haha. Don't forget to check it out. It's on my blog.
So pretty! Mine will be finished cooling in fifteen minutes. It's been killing us to wait three hours! I'm turning the Sabayon into ice cream a la David Lebovitz's freeze it in a pan in the freezer method. I just hope I can get it out of the pan in one piece.
Hanaa: Thank you - we are all so exited, and she is so beautiful! When I first saw her, my baby making went into overdrive - Tom is happy about THAT development - LOL. I did check out the pastry cream idea and let me tell you I will probably like that better. I make a sabayon (my grandmother recipe) but is nothing compare to Flo's recipe. For starters its made with Marsala Dolce - do I need to say more?
Vicki: That is so funny, ask Hanaa, I wanted to turn the sabayon into ice cream to. I'm just to tire, I may back up and crumble and do it tonight.. so we will see. I will keep an eye out for your post to see if the ice cream idea works! And a tip that Hanaa gave me too.. I actually unmolded mine at the 1.5 hour mark and as you can see it was perfectly fine. (just to save you an hour and half of time ).
Oh, gosh I forgot to say congratulations on the new little baby! What a cute name.
Congrats on the little baby girl and being an Auntie! :D Sienna reminds me of that actress...she's very pretty!
Glad you like the cake too! :D My cake is gone..lol! Everyone ate it up so quickly..and i had to throw away the left over sabayon..:(
Congrats on being an Aunt. The cake looks delicious, I love Flo Braker, I really ought to buy the book and join you guys!
Love the pictures Monica! The one with the orange zest and red spatula in particular looks awesome.
gorgeous ! I love the dotted texture and it is really divine with the zests I bet.