Chocolate Castella Cake 巧克力古早味蛋糕

Taiwanese Castella Cake is famous for its soft cotton-like texture. It is so fluffy and moist that it almost melts in your mouth!

This is an almost fool-proof recipe, as long as you follow the steps closely, it can’t really go wrong. The secret of this soft texture of this cake is to pour warm oil (around 70 degree Celsius) into the flour. This prevents the formation of gluten, rendering the cake utterly soft and fluffy.

It’s a really smart method, yet easy to execute. I hope you’ll be inspired and give this a try. 

I have prepared a step-by-step video instruction for you, enjoy making your castella cake!

Chocolate Castella Cake
Ingredients

A) Egg yolk batter 

• 50g vegetable oil
• 46g cake flour
• 20g cocoa powder
• 50g milk
• 4 eggs yolks separated from whites

B) Meringue

• 4 egg whites separated from yolks
• 1 tsp vinegar
• 70g white caster sugar

Cooking Directions

1. Line  7”x7”x2” square baking dish with parchment paper. 
2. Warm the oil to around 70°C. If you do not have a thermometer, you can heat the oil in oven at 70°C for 8 minutes or microwave the oil for around 1 minute.
3. Sift in cake flour and cocoa powder. Whisk until well combined
4. Add in milk, whisk to combine.
5. Separate your egg yolks from the whites, add the yolks into the batter. Whisk until well combined.
6. Egg whites should be placed into a clean bowl without oil or water. There should be no egg yolks inside at all. To your egg whites, add vinegar and sugar, beat egg whites until you reach a soft peak (When you stir the egg whites with your whisk and lift it up, it should create a wiggly tail, if the meringue is too stiff, this will cause cracks in your cake)
7. Preheat your oven to 140 degrees Celsius.
8. To your chocolate egg yolk batter, mix in some of the meringue. Mix until well combined.
9. Pour all the egg yolk batter into the meringue. Whisk gently in order not to lose the fluffiness. 
10. Pour your cake batter into the lined baking dish, leave around 2 tbsp of batter (optional, it is to draw on top of the cake). 
11. Even out the top with a spatula. To break up the air bubbles, gently tap the square pan on the table a few times.
12. Prepare a larger baking dish, pour room temperature water to around 1 cm height. Place the square dish with your cake batter into this large pan. 
13. Bake for 50 minutes. Then increase the temperatures to 150°C and bake for another 10 minutes.
14. Once cooked, remove the cake from the pan. Peel away the parchment paper while hot.

巧克力古早味蛋糕

材料：

A

50g 植物油 

46g 低筋麵粉 

20g 可可粉

50g 牛奶

4 蛋黃 

B

4 蛋白 

1 小匙白醋

70g 细砂糖

步骤：

1. 油加热到70°C（微波1分鐘或烤箱70°C 8分钟）
2. 混合植物油,麵粉和可可粉至無顆粒 
3. 加入牛奶拌均，再加入蛋黃攪拌至順滑 
4. 蛋白加入醋和砂糖，打發蛋白至濕性發泡。
5. 把少许蛋白霜加入蛋黄糊攪拌均勻。
6. 搅拌好的蛋黄糊全部倒入蛋白霜。切拌法拌均。
7. 蛋糕糊倒入模具 （如果要在蛋糕上画图，就留下两汤匙的蛋糕糊，加入少许可可粉拌均。然后用裱花袋画出想要的图案）
8. 水浴法140°c，烤50分鐘。然后150°c，再烤10分钟。