The Renée Fleming Golden Chiffon

I have to admit that this week’s selection from the Baking Bible was another one of those that didn’t inspire me, and is something I probably wouldn’t have baked if I wasn’t participating in this bake-through. On Saturday, instead of working on this cake, I made bourbon pecan pie truffles, because they just sounded delicious. I mixed & rolled them on Saturday, then spent some time on Sunday dipping them. I made a good mess, and had fun doing it, but managed to completely avoid baking this cake, even though I had all the ingredients on hand. Monday rolled around, and I saw everyone else start posting about it, and they all made some reference to it being quick and easy. Ok, fine, I decided to try and make it in the evenings this week. So, yesterday, I made the cake, and I said to myself, “I’m going to cheat, just this one time, and buy lemon curd for the whipped cream.”

Sigh. It’s always worth it to make it from scratch. I bought a jar of “lemon curd” tonight on the way home from the gym, and it was just awful. I knew as soon as I opened it that the smell was all wrong. Then I tasted it, and it was nothing but sadness. It actually tasted a little bit like stale vegetable oil. Of course, Jay pointed out that it’s probably not entirely the company’s fault, because it’s actually best before November 2015… which means it’s probably been sitting on the shelf at the store for a good long time, if a canned product actually managed to reach its best before date. So, it’s going back to Sobeys.

Since I was sort of rushed in making this one, I didn’t take a whole lot of pictures, but there wasn’t exactly a whole lot that I didn’t photograph, anyway.

The first step is to mix the dry ingredients with a oil, water, egg yolk, lemon zest combo. Then beat egg whites into a meringue. The fold the meringue into the yolk-y mixture.

You prep the springform pan by surrounding it with cake strips, or in my case, you get lazy and use a silicone cake pan. You add an upside-down flower nail in the center to act as a conductor, and make sure the center sets before the outside gets dry. As usual, search the kitchen in a panic, looking for the flower nail. This seems to be standard practice for chiffon cakes, for me.

As the recipe said it would (like always, with Rose!), the cake domed up beautifully in the oven, and only collapsed a minute or two after removal from the oven. After cooling upside-down for an hour or two, remove from the pan, and put it back right-side up on a plate.

As I mentioned, I tried to cheat with the whipped cream and use store-bought lemon curd, but I just couldn’t bring myself to use what I’d bought. So, I whipped up a batch of lemon curd tonight while I was on the phone with my Mom, wishing her a happy 65th birthday! It sounds like she had a nice lunch with a friend yesterday, and dinner at my sister’s this evening. My gift to her was delivered a day early, too, because the nursery didn’t want to deliver in the snow & ice storm they’re having today. We’ve had nothing but rain, here!

All in all, I’m glad I made this. It’s a light and fluffy cake, and the lemon curd cuts the richness of the whipped cream. It was easy to make, too, even without taking a shortcut on the lemon curd. Goes well with a piece of the crushed candy cane chocolate fudge that Jay made yesterday, too! 😀