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Olive Oil Cake issue

cwizou

I've been lurking on this site for quite a while, enjoying the incredible content with great results, so since it's my first post, and before I start with this troubleshoot I really want to thank the whole team for giving us ChefSteps. From the content to the (truly great) website, everything is top notch and I really hope you'll reach a suitable business model to keep this site going.

Back to the troubleshoot, I've tried the Olive Oil Cake recipe twice and hit a bit of an issue. I think I know why know but maybe those who managed to do the recipe OK can confirm before I try it for a third time.

First time I ended up overcooking the cake, I massively messed up as I was watching the top crust not getting any browning and thought I still had time

Reaching 85° happens faster than I thought because on my first measure I was over 110°C. The cake was good flavorwise, lacked color on top and wasn't as soft as one would expect after watching the video.

I then had a pretty stupid idea to troubleshot my first attempt. Since I lacked browning on top of the cake, I thought "let's raise the oven rack" (I'm using a conventional home oven). I ended up with some browning on top, but it still looked "white". Sadly I didn't take a picture, but another issue was that the bottom of the cake was still a bit too liquid despite reaching the required 85°C and the inside didn't really look yellow (it was more of a grey/greenish, sadly I didn't take a picture). At that point I thought that raising the oven rack was indeed a stupid idea.

However while watching an Harvard Science and Cooking course yesterday (this one, Bakistry), Joanne Chang mentionned that one thing they were trying to fight when baking was cake going "meringuy". And it hit me, the whitish browning I had on my second attempt indeed looked like a meringue !

Anyway, this is going long but after thinking a bit about it, I guess I messed up either in :

- beating the egg white a bit too far

- not incorporating well enough the egg whites at step 7 of the recipe

Or maybe both.

Did anyone else hit a similar issue trying this recipe ? Some tips on properly folding the egg whites with the batter may be just what I need.

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Chris_Young_80640

Comes in a very packable cardboard box.

cwizou

Right !

Well, thanks for the tip ! I'll be in SF in a month or so, I'll look for that brand.

Chris_Young_80640

Yeah, so I was aware of this from my work in the UK. Basically, the FDA says they're fine. The EU says they're not. It's been a big headache for commercial bakers in Europe because a lot of products don't work well with the substitutes that have been developed. In the USA and Canada, look for Soft as Silk branded cake flour.

cwizou

Happy to help, thanks for checking on your end !

Regarding the Chlorinated flour, I went to check mine but saw no mention of bleaching (I saw however than my "cake" flour contained leveaning agents, at 2%...). According to Wikipedia though, bleaching agents were banned 15 years ago in Europe :

Note that as part of these legislative changes, the use of the flour bleaching agents,

e.g. chlorine and chlorine dioxide is no longer allowed. Therefore claims for the use

of unbleached flour are meaningless and should be avoided.

Found that here : http://www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/breadflourguide.pdf

Guess I'll have to smuggle some in my suitcase next time, unless you know of an alternative. Thanks for the information !

Chris_Young_80640

So, yes, we had an error on the core temperature. Sorry about that, but your problem did help us fix that, so thank you.

Also, this recipe is a high-ratio cake and we are using chlorinated flour. I've talked about this before, but chlorinating flour modifies the starch granules in a unique way that allows them to keep a cake from collapsing when the ratio of fat and/or sugar exceeds the amount of flour used. Non-chlorinated cake flours will have problems with this recipe.

cwizou

Looks a lot better :

I think I made 2 mistakes on my previous attempt

- overbeating the egg whites. I went past stiff I think last time which caused issues when folding the whites into the batter

- not measuring correctly the temp. I saw a 10° diff between top and bottom apparently, that definitely messed me up last time as I measured too deep, went up to 95° top third this time

Will serve it tommorrow and let you know how it is inside. From my poking holes though, it seems to look reaaaally good !

Again Grant & all, thanks for the help in troubleshooting.

cwizou

Just saw the recipe was upped to 95°C, close call as I'm putting one right now in the oven. Will post pictures later !

cwizou

Sadly it does not, that could be my issue. It's one of those basic electric ovens combo with four electric burners (not sure that's the right word sorry) on top of it.

grant

Does you oven have a fan? would help if you wan the crust.

cwizou

Thanks for getting back to me on this one.

I did fold it in 3 steps, but thought that maybe I didn't incorporate them well enough. I tried to not overmix to keep as much air as possible but maybe I overdid it.

110°C was definitely my mistake. Thanks for letting me know if 90-95 is indeed what I should aim. I'll do another run tommorrow and make sure to check middle top third as indicated and post pictures of the results.

grant

Fold the eggs in parts.

The 110C temp seams unreal. Make sure its not at the bottom of the pan rather the very center/ top 1/3 of the cake.

Ill look into the temp, seems low. I think we should be at 90c-95C. Might be Nick's mistake here. Ill have him get back to you.

Grant