Earl grey cotton cheesecake (improved)

It's been a long time since I've made cotton cheesecakes. I went through through a whole series period in 2017 where I tried so many recipes and methods in an attempt to use my 9 inch pan. All kinds of problems occurred including cracks, undercooked or developing a waist. I read so many different blogs for troubleshooting. There were different temperatures used in a heroic blogpost where I tried 7 different methods, used double cream, higher temp baking which caused it to deflate, finally success using my small oven but with 8 inch pan but failure when I used the same oven with a 9 inch pan. I won't go into those cakes where I left out key ingredients like flour or milk which naturally, failed. This recipe is not very forgiving. In short, I haven't found a really reliable recipe or method.

Although I haven't had much success with my big oven due to poor temp control, I've realised that using the big oven is the only way to bake a 9 inch cake.

Kat Kwa's earl grey cotton cheesecake for 8 inch pan (video) - nothing spectacular aka the standard bain marie method with 5 eggs. She uses condensed milk which I don't have. She uses 3 bags of tea in 160ml hot water and steeps for 15 mins. She uses room temp water for the water bath and bakes 150 deg C for 90 mins. She uses a small oven where the cake sits in the centre but the top of the cake has at least 20cm clearance from the oven roof. The cake doesn't sit inside with the oven off. She unmoulds immediately and removes parchment after it comes out.

I am very brave in attempting to use my big oven again because I want a 9 inch cake using 6 eggs. I'm using MyKitchen 101 (video and written) standard cotton cheesecake adapted for earl grey. I'm also using Kat Kwa's cooking times of 90 to 95 min at 150 deg C instead of Kitchen101's 150 deg C for 40 mins then 140 deg C for 1 hr 20 mins and cooled in switch off oven for 40-50 mins with door ajar. My manual oven cannot change temps so fast.

Ingredients

250g cream cheese, room temp and cubed

50g butter

½ tsp salt

30g sugar (for yolks) and 120g sugar (for meringue)

3 bags of earl grey tea

150g milk (use 170g then extract out 150g milk tea)

70g plain flour + 20g cornstarch (aka 90g cake flour)

6 eggs, separated

2 tsp lemon juice

Method

1. Line a 9 inch baking pan with parchment. Prepare the tea: heat up the milk to 95 deg C and add the 3 tea bags. Steep the bags in the milk for 15 mins then extract out 150g of milk tea.

2. In a bain marie, combine cream cheese, salt, butter and first portion of the sugar and melt then blend until smooth. Remove from bain marie.

3. Sieve in flours and fold in. Set aside.

4. Add egg yolks one at a time and mix well each time.

5. In a very clean bowl, whisk up the egg whites at low speed. Once frothy, add the lemon juice.

6. Add the sugar in 3 batches and mix each time for 1 - 2 mins. Once all the sugar is in, turn up to high speed. Beat until nearly soft peaks then turn down and beat at least speed for 2 minutes to dispel the bubbles. Meringue is ready once shiny and peaks fold over.

7. Add first batch of meringue to batter and gently mix with hand whisk.

8. For the second and third batch of meringue, be more careful mixing in with the hand whisk so as not to knock out the air. 

9. For the fourth and final batch of meringue, pour the batter back into the meringue and use a spatula to fold in, turning the bowl as you fold. Tap the bowl on the counter top to burst the big bubbles.

10. Pour batter into the lined baking tin and tap on the counter top to break big bubbles. Use a skewer to trace out zig zags to dispel smaller bubbles.

11. Place a cloth in a bigger baking tray and place the cake tin on top of the cloth. Pour in room temp water till 1 inch up the side of the tin. (cake cracks if using hot water).

12. Place the cake in the lower third (but not at the very bottom) of the oven and bake for 150 deg C for 90 mins. Turn off oven and remove water bath. Leave cake inside with door ajar for another 30 mins to minimise shrinkage.

13. Remove from oven and unmold completely. Allow to cool on a rack at least 6 cm above the counter top until completely cool. Best to refrigerate overnight before slicing.

Recipe feedback

- A really short cake (2 inches tall) but at least no cracks! No waist! The brown isn't very golden but I think the cake is perfection as far as I'm concerned.

- When I peeled off the sides and bottom, the bottom was somewhat moist and soft so I had to be very careful not to tear a huge chunk out of the cake. However, with refrigeration, it should be firm up. At least the bottom is cooked!

- Based on the colour, in this big oven, 160 deg C for 85 minutes with 30 mins resting in the oven with door ajar would probably be ideal, except my big oven doesn't like keeping at 160 deg C for some reason and keeps going above or under.

- Compared to my black sesame cotton cheesecake previously, temp and timing were the same. The only real differences in method were:

1) I left the cake in the oven for further 30 minutes with door ajar instead of removing immediately and dropping it on the counter top. This prevented the waist. 

2) My water bath similarly started from room temp water so no crack (which Kitchen 101 suggests happens when using hot water). Water also only came to 1cm (instead of 1 inch as per black sesame cheesecake) up the side. With both recipes, I didn't wrap the outside of the tin in foil so there wasn't an eggy centre. The water had most evaporated by the time I removed it from the oven!

3) My top also didn't rise as high this time and the colour wasn't as nice because the oven was bigger and the top of the cake wasn't as close to the heating element. Updated: I've realised that I swapped the order of the flour and egg yolk. Looks like they do make a difference as the flour needs to slightly cook in the heated milk + melted cream cheese mixture.

4) I totally removed all parchment, even that at the bottom to prevent any condensation and thus wetness at the bottom. That led to heart stopping moments when I was afraid the cake would tear or split when I was peeling away the parchment from the side and flipping it over to remove the bottom and again when removing the parchment from the bottom.

Cake next day after overnight in fridge. Slight sag at the side because parchment and pan were removed

Beautiful Earl Grey color

Earl grey madeleines

After the last post on comparisons, I decided to try JOCs but adapted with Sally because it used normal flour but proportionately the least amount of flour and egg, and replaced with milk. It also did not use a mixer, which is good for me. Although I have a hand beater, I don't relish the washing up. I followed Sally's recipe and tips and decided to use only ½ tsp of baking powder as she did for 18 madeleines. That didn't produce the signature hump and next time I need to double the amount as I did with all the other ingredients since I have 24 madeleines. The pastry is also sweeter than I'm used to but the sugar was important for making it crispy. So the recipe below has been adjusted for  ingredient proportions and also doubled for next time because I have 2 pans (with 12 moulds each).

Sources:
1) Proportions: https://www.justonecookbook.com/cherry-blossom-madeleines/
2) Tips: https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2018/01/17/madeleines/ 

Ingredients (makes 20 to 24)
114g (8 tbsp) melted butter, room temp
⅔ cup (124g) sugar
1 cup (120g) flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp earl gray leaves, crushed
1 tbsp milk, room temp
2 eggs, room temp
2 tbsp (28g) melted butter (for brushing the tin moulds)

Method
1) Bring out the eggs and milk and let them come to room temp. Melt the butter and allow to cool down to room temp. 
2) Combine the sugar and egg and whisk until pale and fluffy.
3) Sieve the flour and baking powder. Sift into the egg mixture and fold carefully to avoid knocking out the air. I used the whisk to fold the flour in. 
4) Add in the ground earl gray tea and fold in.
5) Add the milk and carefully blend.
6) Add in half of the melted butter and blend, and continue adding slowly and blending carefully.
7) Cover with cling film and put in the fridge to rest for between 30 to 60 minutes. No longer than 60 minutes otherwise the melted butter will harden.
8) While waiting for it to chill, preheat the oven to 180 deg C. Brush the moulds with plenty of melted butter. Dusting with a sifting of flour is not necessary as it can get claggy.
9) Fill each mould about ⅔ full, with 1 level tbsp of batter (using the measuring spoon) to get 20 maddys, or fill ¾ tbsp to get 24 maddys. No need to smoothen out the top as it will spread out and flatten, instead, try to create a peak.
10) Bake at 177 deg C (no higher as it can burn on the outside but leave the inside raw). Baking time is 13 minutes, although watch carefully in the last 2 minutes or it can burn.
11) Use a fork to release each and leave to cool on a cooking rack. Alternatively, invert the entire madeleine tin over the cooling rack.
12) Leave to cool slightly for 3 minutes and eat immediately while the edges are still crispy. It looses its crispiness after 10 minutes (!). Best eaten with 24 hours. Store the cooled remainder in an airtight box at room temp for up to 4 days.

Recipe feedback
This recipe was a bit on the sweet side, I could probably reduce up to 20g of sugar and get away with it. I couldn't taste the tea because it hadn't been 'activated'. Not sure what I can do about this next time, it would be hard to boil tea in 1 tbsp of milk.

On day 2, the texture of madeleines reminded me of kueh bulu. That's the best description of this recipe, slightly biscuity and yet cakey. Can't really call it sponge, at most saviordi biscuits?

Earl grey chiffon

Based on a previous post that compared chiffon cake recipes, I decided to use DGW's actual tried and tested recipe for a 25 cm cake tin rather than 'upsizing' Christine's recipe from 20 to 25cm by a factor of 1.25 as she suggests in her comments. A side by side comparison of the ingredients showed that Christine's recipe has very little flour but a lot of liquid and sugar, which makes me question its structure. After my experience with collapsing meringue-based cakes (ie my cheesecake), I'm ultra wary of cakes with too little structure. It's fun eating moist pouffy pieces of 'air' but not so fun if they need to be inverted as chiffon cakes do when cooling!

Source: http://thedomesticgoddesswannabe.com/2014/08/earl-grey-chiffon-cake/
I found out that my tin isn't 26 cm but actually 25.5 cm so a recipe for the former works. The cake is flatter but the cooking times are about there. In fact, after trawling the Internet for any chiffon recipe, I only came across 1 recipe for a 26 cm tin which was for Pandan Chiffon by ieatshootpost. That recipe says that a 26 cm tin uses a 9-egg recipe. Gosh! 9 eggs is way too much for 2 people to consume!

My recipe adapted some of the measurements e.g. I reduced the sugar, omitted the cream of tartar (which I have found from my cheesecake souffle recipe research to be unnecessary and adds an unwanted sourness), and reduced the tea (which seemed rather wasteful and the same thickness of tea can be achieved with fewer teabags but a longer steep). The method has also been adapted from Christine's.

Ingredients
7 eggs
140ml of boiling water (increase to 200ml because i) the tea bags absorb water and I was left with approximately only 100ml of tea and ii) insufficient water to steep the tea bags in)
5 tea bags (reduced from 7 because I had plenty to rebrew and make very strong leftover tea!)
93ml oil (not the same as 93g of oil, luckily I checked!)
35g sugar (for addition to the yolks)
175g cake flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
140g sugar (for addition to the whites) (reduced from 150g but someone said that while it was edible, it could have been sweeter! The sweetness should be just right once the tea is reduced too)

1) Make the tea and leave the tea bags in to steep until it cools down completely.
2) In a bowl, whisk the eggs with the 35g sugar and the salt until light and creamy.
3) Add the oil and continue to whisk until pale and creamy.
4) Add the 140ml of the brewed tea and stir to incorporate.
5) Sift the flour and baking powder. Add it to the egg yolk mixture in 2 additions, whisking carefully each time just to get everything to combine so that there aren't pockets of flour. Don't beat too vigorously because you don't want to create gluten.
5) In another big and very clean bowl (I wipe down the bowl, my whisk, and any spatulas I here with a vinegar soaked kitchen towel to remove any grease, water, or soap), whisk or beat the egg whites until opaque and foamy using a low speed. Add the first addition of sugar and beat. Add the sugar in another 2 additions (total 3 additions). Increase the speed and beat until just before stiff peaks. After the meringue reaches soft peaks, stop every 30s to check that you don't over beat the meringue and go beyond stiff peaks.
6) Taking 1/3 of the meringue, add it to the yolk mixture and fold in with the whisk. You don't have to worry too much about beating out the air at this point, this is just to lighten the mixture.
7) Taking a second 1/3 of the meringue, this time, fold in more carefully with a whisk.
8) Return the yolk + meringue mixture to the leftover meringue. This time, using either a spatula or whisk, very carefully fold in the meringue (I draw the meringue from the bottom of the bowl and lift through to the top as I rotate the bowl) until no egg white remains.
9) Pour into the cake tin from a height of 8 cm. (ieatshootpost advises not rotating the tin but this was lousy advice - my cake was lopsided! Maybe it depends on the batter. My batter wasn't flowy, so the tube blocked it from flowing to the other half of the tin. I would say, rotate the tin once or twice but not continually.)
10) Burst the bigger bubbles in the batter by dropping the cake tin sharply on the counter top several times. Using a skewer, draw zig lines through the batter, paying attention to the sides and bottom of the tin. No need to smoothen the top of the batter.
11) Bake at 170 deg C (no grill; it reads 175 deg C on my oven's dial) for 65 minutes at the bottom of the oven. Check after 60 minutes by inserting a skewer, which should come out clean. I found no need to open the door to rotate the tin at all for even browning this time.
(i) Some recipes suggest tenting with foil and reducing to 160 deg C but I found these unnecessary, AS LONG AS the temperature is constant at 170 deg C. I watched my oven thermometer like the hawk for the entire baking time. 
ii) Another recipe stated that even after the skewer comes out clean, the cake still needs another 5 to 10 minutes to firm up, otherwise it might drop out under its own weight when inverted)

12) Never open the door until at least after half time or the cake will collapse. Christine opens the door at half time to score the top of the cake. This makes sense now after I developed serious cracks on the top.

13) Immediately once the cake is out of the oven, invert it onto a raised surface, I used a can of tinned food. (ieatshootpost asserts that u want to elevate it as far off the counter as u can to avoid condensation. He also advises draping with a damp towel to speed up the process. I didn't and it took 3 hours to cool completely, which is why the pictures go from day time/dusk to night time!)

14) Only attempt to unmould when the cake is complete cool. Insert a small offset spatula and trace around the tube. Insert a larger offset spatula or sharp knife and cut around the edges. Try not to use a sawing motion which leaves a shaggy/jagged edge, but use one swift continuous scraping motion. In both cases, scrap as close to the tin as you can, don't leave the delicious brown skin behind! (I managed to get some, as seen from the picture)

15) Invert the tin onto a serving plate or wire rack. Carefully push the bottom out (I nearly tore my cake because some of it was still stuck on the side, so run your spatula around again just to be sure). Now also cut/scrape the bottom of the cake off the bottom of the tin. 

Voila! A beautiful chiffon in all its glory.

Enjoy!

Chiffon cake comparisons

I love doing these comparisons as research for my recipes. Having just finally bought an angel food pan for chiffon cakes, I’m eager to try it out. Now that I've had some experience beating meringue, I've also got more confidence to finally try chiffon out. All the baking temps are the same, at 170 deg C.

Earl grey
Here are 3 recipes and their features:
1) JOC
: http://www.justonecookbook.com/earl-grey-chiffon-cake/
- 17cm or 7" pan
- 3 eggs
- adds tea leaves in the cake

2) Domestic Goddess
: http://thedomesticgoddesswannabe.com/2014/08/earl-grey-chiffon-cake/
- She is fantastic, she worked out the proportions for 18cm to 25cm pans.
Now I just have to measure my pan! Oops!
- 18cm: 4 eggs; 21cm: 5 eggs; 23cm: 6 eggs; 25cm: 7 eggs What do I do if my pan is 26 cm?

3) Christine
: http://en.christinesrecipes.com/2014/10/earl-grey-tea-chiffon-cake.html
- makes milk tea
- 20cm or 8" pan
- 5 eggs
- adds tea leaves in the cake
- makes a slash on top halfway thru baking

Pandan
1) Jo the tart queen
https://jothetartqueen.wordpress.com/2012/11/10/pandan-chiffon-cake/
- 23cm pan
- 5 yolks, 6 whites

2) Kitchen Tigress
http://kitchentigress.blogspot.com.au/2011/03/pandan-chiffon-cake.html
- 21cm pan
- measures egg by volume
- bakes at 180 deg C!

3) Christine
http://en.christinesrecipes.com/2011/06/pandan-chiffon-cake.html
- 20cm pan
- 5 eggs

4) Ieatshootpost
http://ieatishootipost.sg/how-to-make-a-pandan-chiffon-cake/
- 25 cm pan
- 9 eggs

Black sesame
1) Christine
http://en.christinesrecipes.com/2013/02/black-sesame-chiffon-cake.html
- 20 cm pan
- 6 egg whites and 6 yolks
- uses black sesame powder. Cake doesn't come out black?

2) Baking language
http://www.bakinglanguage.com/?p=1571
- Adapted from Christine
- Adds charcoal to make cake black

3) Gin's Kitchen
https://ginskitchen.wordpress.com/2013/08/08/black-sesame-chiffon-cake/
- Also adapted from Christine

Orange
The only recipes that I could find with a 10" (ie 25cm) chiffon pan.

1) Mandy
http://mandysbakingjourney.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/orange-chiffon-cake.html
However she bakes at 180 deg C for 1 hour. Maybe because it's more 'wet' since it uses orange juice
- 6 egg yolks, 7 egg whites
- 10" or 25cm pan
- 130g juice

2) Joy of baking
http://www.joyofbaking.com/OrangeChiffonCake.html
- 6 egg yolks, 7 egg whites
- 10" or 25cm pan
- 180 ml juice
- Bakes at 170 deg C for 55 to 60 minutes

3) Rasa Malaysia
http://rasamalaysia.com/orange-chiffon-cake-recipe/2/
- 7 eggs
- Weirdly using self-raising flour rather than cake flour
- 60 ml juice
- 22cm pan

General tips
1) https://jothetartqueen.wordpress.com/2013/09/12/back-to-basics-how-to-make-the-perfect-chiffon-cake/
- the right aluminum pan with removable bottom. Never grease it.
- proper whisking in of egg whites to avoid heaviness or streaks of egg white.
- No opening during the first 20 minutes and don't keep the door open for too long, or it may deflate.
- Foil the top once you have achieved the right colour to prevent over-browning.

2) http://kitchentigress.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/pandan-chiffon-cake-step-by-step-video.html
- Whisk egg whites in bowl with straight not curved sides if you want it more moist!
- Stale egg whites whisk better than fresh ones which turn out grainy
- Skewer inserted should come out clean but needs further 5 to 7.5 baking time for the right crust color.
- Immediately once out of the oven, invert. If it falls out, game over. If it doesn't budge, it's over done. Ideally it should drop a bit but stay on.
- Scrape the pan when cutting out the cake, don't leave the tasty brown bits behind!

3) http://ieatishootipost.sg/how-to-make-a-pandan-chiffon-cake/
- use the right size pan. For a 9 egg recipe, use 25 cm. A pan that is too big will not rise proper.
- cream the egg yolk and sugar instead of just whisking. Also, beat in (with mixer) the sifted flour rather than just mix in with whisk. This makes it easier to fold in the meringue.
- Whisk the meringue to just before stiff peaks otherwise it is difficult to fold in
- Pour in the batter from one side of the pan only. Don't rotate the pan.
- Sharply tap the pan on the countertop but also use a chopstick to go around the sides.
- Elevate the cake far off the counter otherwise there will be condensation. You can drape a wet towel over the tin to speed up the cooling.
- Use a sharp (serrated) knife and press against the side of the pan. Use one movement only, don't saw.
- You can place in the fridge to cool completely before cutting as this helps the cake to stabilise and to cut neat slices.