Black sesame chiffon cake


This black sesame chiffon cake is the poster cake for Keiko Ishida's japanese desserts book Okashi Treats. I've had it for quite a few years now, and have tried making several of her recipes in the past couple of years (which generally turned out well). But perhaps the idea of making and creaming a chiffon cake seemed too challenging before I took a proper cake decorating class, and so I never attempted this till last week!

If you're into Japanese-style cakes, this book is a good buy since it's written in English and gives anyone easy access to Japanese recipes/ recipes with a Japanese twist. I also appreciate the baking tips shared in the book - which should be very useful for most beginners. Japanese/ japanese-influenced cakes really appeal to me, and I've gotten a few books written entirely in Japanese in the past few months. Not too surprisingly though, the present me (when excitedly getting a new Japanese recipe book) repeatedly overestimated the perseverance of the future me in translating each recipe, and so to date I've only attempted a total of ONE recipe from these books..

But I will do better in the coming months! (or so i think... :))



For this cake, I decided to use a 15-cm disposable chiffon cake pan (which I got from the wonderful DAISO). Wasn't sure I'd keep making chiffons and so it was best not to add a redundant pan to my already large collection of cake pans. I finally got the chiffon out of its paper pan with some small crevices in the cake, but I suppose it wasn't too bad for a first effort. And in any case - everything will be covered up by cream!

The cake batter also looked more yellowish than greyish as I was mixing it; so slight tweaks were made to the sesame portion of the recipe to enhance my chances of getting a charcoal-coloured sponge interior. Thankfully, the colour came out about right. 


And to my pleasant surprise, the soft fluffly chiffon goes really well with light, fresh cream. It was my first time eating a creamed chiffon cake, but I'm now a convert! I've never really fancied chiffons as they feel somewhat unsubstantial and somehow fail to give me the feeling of sweet indulgence. But it becomes something quite different (yet not overly heavy) with some cream and a glass of milk. I think it's best enjoyed slightly chilled - so the chiffon still retains some fluffiness while the cream is cool.


I'd probably be making more of this next time! 

8 comments:

  1. The cake looks pretty :) I'll definitely be getting hold of the book, since I saw another rec of it (kinako chiffon with red bean whipped cream). May I know where you got the black sesame powder? I can't find it and I don't have a food processor!

    - Buttercup

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  2. Thanks!
    Do you stay in Singapore? If I recall correctly, I prob got it from NTUC Finest at Marine Parade. And if you want to buy black sesame paste, you can try Phoon Huat :)

    Have fun!

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  3. Marine Parade!!! I live on the other side of the island, haha. I've been trying to hunt it down in Isetan or Meidi-ya. Thank you!

    Btw, tried out the carrot cake recipe and reduced the sugar, it tasted so 'grown-up' from the orange zest! I haven't made layer cakes with nuts in it before so slicing it was quite a surprise - and a lot of the walnuts dropped out along the way. Decorating with thyme sprigs is a great idea :) love your blog!

    - Buttercup

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  4. Incidentally, I saw ground sesame at Daiso ION Orchard today... but there was like one pack left. So u may want to try your luck at a DAISO near you.

    Glad you enjoyed making the carrot cake! Yeah people tell me they like the extra punch/ refreshing flavour from the orange zest... but credits go to Nigel Slater haha.

    Thanks for visiting my blog - are you an avid baker? ;)

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  5. !!! Thank you so much :D I most certainly will ... I can't think why I didn't try Daiso!

    I am not so much an avid baker as I am an avid reader of baking/cooking blogs :D but when I bake, I like making layer cakes. My new year's resolution was to bake chiffon cakes/cream puffs/bread/pizza/macarons/etc. but the time hasn't materialised so far ... and in the meantime I read blogs like yours! Thank you so much for helping me source the black sesame powder! ^_^

    - Buttercup

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  6. can share how u remove ur cake from the disposable pan?

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    Replies
    1. Hi - when baking chiffons you typically need to oil and flour the pan. I did this for the disposable pan, and inverted the entire cake to let it cool once out of the oven. Also use a palette knife to neatly go round the sides of the cake. If all goes well, the cake should 'drop' out if the case on its own. I didn't do these very well, and eventually had to use a scissors to cut away the base of the pan to peel it away from the cake! ;)

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