I was thinking about my grandmother a few weeks ago. Her birthday is September 18, and she would have been 129 years old. Sometimes it surprises me to think that I knew someone who would now be 129. Of course, Philip's parents, whose birthdays were last week, would have been 100. This means that I am pretty old myself, but it is also a source of some wonder to reflect on the passage of time. As the Grateful Dead put it, what a long strange trip it's been. My grandmother started out as the 8th of 15 children in a farm family in the province of Banat in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire and eventually ran her own rooming house in Des Plaines, Illinois. 

My grandmother made chiffon cake, and I have the plate she served it on. So I decided to make a chiffon cake in her memory. This recipe is from Betty Crocker, and I think my grandmother used a predecessor of this recipe from an earlier version of BC. I don't think this is a cake she made in the old country. 

Note: this makes a big cake, suitable for family gatherings or receptions or parties. Whenever such things happen again. 

The ingredients:

2-1/4 cups of cake flour (or 2 cups of regular flour);

1-1/2 cups of white sugar;

1 tablespoon baking powder;

1 teaspoon table (not kosher) salt;

5 egg yolks (or 7 with regular flour);

7 egg whites;

1/4 cup orange juice;

2 tablespoons of orange zest;

and 1 teaspoon cream of tartar.

For the frosting:

1/3 cup soft butter;

1-1/2 tablespoons orange zest;

2-3 tablespoons of orange juice

and 3 cups powdered sugar. 

Yes, I know this is a lot of orange zest. I ended up needing 3 good sized oranges to get that much zest, which did mean I had enough orange juice for the cake and frosting (and some to drink).

I started by zesting and juicing the oranges. 

I measured the flour, salt, sugar, and baking powder into a bowl. 

Next I separated the eggs, putting the whites into a big bowl. I had a couple of extra egg whites in the refrigerator from hollandaise sauce making so I had the right number of yolks and whites. You can simplify the math by using regular flour - which requires 7 eggs.  

I made a pit in the flour and poured in the oil, egg yolks, orange juice and orange zest. 
I had extra zest and juice which I set aside for frosting making. 
I used a whisk to incorporate the wets into the dries. 

Another picture of whisking.

Now I turned my attention to the egg whites. I added a pinch of salt and started to beat the egg whites. When the whites began to fluff up just a little, I added the cream of tartar. 

I beat the egg whites until they were stiff. 

Here is a picture of stiff egg whites. When one removes the beaters, there are little peaks. 

I then remembered to turn the oven on to 325 degrees. 

https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxgZA3frSNdJcXIl-7EPkCYc2NjPOReL-M8sWNWIAEw0t7kAo6VQ18iVHPpne9s3w2u-4plhwst91BW7Lpdr-hzmB98l4Ivj8GEfnqYS8EVsmG2FIikO9Vxc6WfwPGRN4_CxQ

When the egg whites were done, I started slowly pouring the flour/sugar/oil/egg yolk mixture into the egg whites, folding the flour mixture in. I would stop pouring from time to time to concentrate on folding. This is done with a spatula, putting the spatula at the edge of the batter and going down and along the bottom of the bowl and then up to the middle of the batter. I think Philip took this video which will be better than a thousand words.  

When the ingredients were incorporated (but not beaten or folded past that point), I poured the batter into a 10" tube pan, one of those where the inside part and the bottom come apart. Do not lube the tube pan. 

I baked the cake for about 60 minutes. The recipe said 75 minutes, but that would have been too long in my oven. 
The cake is done when a bamboo skewer comes out clean and when the top springs back when you touch it. 

The cake needs to cool completely, which led me to an appreciation of the inadequacy of my tube pan. The hole in the middle is so small that I had to balance it on a tabasco sauce bottle. Not secure. I put the tabasco sauce bottle in a little canning jar which worked. But this is a design flaw. One wishes to cool such a cake (or angel food cake) by hanging the tube pan on a wine bottle or soy sauce bottle or wine vinegar bottle. 

This tube pan works for other cakes - poppy seed sour cream cake, for example but not cool-them-upside-down cakes. 

When the cake was cool, I flipped it over and ran a knife around the outer edge and lifted the cake out of the pan. 

Then I ran a knife around the tube part and around the bottom and turned the cake over onto a cake rack and then over again onto my grandmother's chiffon cake plate. 

I then made frosting by beating the butter and then adding the zest and some of the powdered sugar and the orange juice and the rest of the powdered sugar. 

Here it is. 

Here I am, back from church on a Sunday morning, cake in hand. 

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