Italian Chiffon Cake | Chiffon Cake all'Italiana
Updated: 5 days ago
The chiffon cake is not an Italian invention and there is no reason to pretend otherwise. It was worked out in Los Angeles in the 1920s by an insurance salesman who baked, kept secret for twenty years, and sold to General Mills in 1947. What Italy did was adopt it, put lemon zest and a vanilla bean into it, and turn it into one of the most reliable cakes in the home repertoire. That adoption was so complete that Italian bakers gave it a name of their own and now buy the pan for it in any decent housewares shop.
The reason it took hold in Italy is worth understanding, because it is a matter of breakfast. Italians eat cake in the morning, dry, with coffee, and the cake therefore has to be still soft on the third day without being iced or filled. A butter sponge cannot do that. The chiffon can, because it is built on oil rather than on butter, and oil does not set hard when the kitchen is cold. Every other thing that is unusual about this recipe follows from that one substitution.
Structurally it is a hybrid, half chemically leavened cake and half meringue. Six eggs go in separated: the yolks are beaten into a thin batter with water, oil, sugar and flour, and the whites are whipped with cream of tartar into a soft meringue and folded back in. It then bakes for a full hour in a tall tube pan that is deliberately left ungreased, so the batter can grip the metal and haul itself up the sides, and it cools hanging upside down. Miss any one of those and you get a good cake rather than a spectacular one.
Yield: 1 tall tube cake, 8 generous servings. Prep: 25 minutes. Bake: 60 minutes. Cooling upside down: at least 2 hours. Total: about 3 hours 30 minutes. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: breakfast cake, merenda, plain dessert. Pan: 9 inch (23 cm) tube pan, 5 inches (13 cm) deep, ungreased.
The Story
Harry Baker sold insurance in Los Angeles and baked on the side. Around 1927 he arrived at a cake that was as light as an angel food but rich and moist in a way angel food never is, and he did it by replacing the butter of a conventional batter with salad oil. He sold his cakes to the Brown Derby and to the Hollywood studio commissaries, which served them for two decades while Baker refused to explain how they were made. In 1947 he sold the formula to General Mills, who spent a further year testing it and released it in 1948 as the chiffon cake, promoting it as the first genuinely new cake in a hundred years. The secret, when it finally came out, was a bottle of vegetable oil.
It reached Italy the way most American home baking did, through magazines, through returning emigrants and eventually through the internet, and it landed on unusually receptive ground. Italian domestic baking is dominated by plain, unfrosted, keeping cakes eaten at breakfast or as merenda: the ciambellone, the torta margherita, the torta di mele. A tall ringed cake that stays tender for days, needs no icing and is dusted with nothing more than confectioners sugar fits that habit exactly. Italian home bakers nicknamed it la fluffosa, a name that spread through Italian food blogs in the early 2010s and is now printed on the pans sold in Italy.
The Italian version made small, consistent changes to the American original rather than reinventing it. Sunflower oil replaced the generic salad oil, because sunflower is the neutral cooking oil of the Italian pantry and its flavour is cleaner than corn or soy. Vanilla extract gave way to a split vanilla bean, and the zest of an untreated lemon became effectively obligatory, which is the single clearest Italian fingerprint on the recipe. And where American practice frosts and fills the cake, Italian practice does neither. It goes to the table bare, with a veil of confectioners sugar, and stands or falls on its crumb.
Ingredients
For the dry ingredients
All purpose flour, 2 1/3 cups (290 g)
Extra fine granulated sugar, 1 1/2 cups (300 g)
Baking powder, 1 tsp (4 g)
Fine salt, 1 pinch
For the yolk batter
Large eggs, 6, separated, at room temperature
Water, at room temperature, 1 cup (240 ml)
Sunflower oil, 1/2 cup (120 ml)
Vanilla bean, 1, split and the seeds scraped out
Organic unwaxed lemon, 1, zest only, finely grated
For the meringue
Egg whites, from the 6 eggs above
Cream of tartar, 1 1/2 tsp (4.5 g)
For finishing
Confectioners sugar, about 2 tbsp (15 g), for dusting
Preparation
Setting the oven and leaving the pan bare
Heat the oven to 350°F (175°C) with a rack in the lower third, so the top of a very tall cake sits near the middle of the oven rather than against the roof. Take out the tube pan, 9 inch (23 cm) across and 5 inches (13 cm) deep, and do nothing to it. No butter, no oil, no flour, no parchment, no baking spray. This is the instruction people most often ignore and it is not a tradition or an oversight: the batter has to be able to grab the bare metal to climb it. A pan that has held a greasy cake before should be washed in hot soapy water and dried.
Sifting the flour with the sugar, the baking powder and the salt
Sift the flour and the baking powder together into a large wide bowl, then whisk in the sugar and the pinch of salt until the mixture looks uniform. Sifting matters more here than in a butter cake, because there is no creaming stage to break up lumps later and the batter will be mixed only briefly. Use a wide bowl rather than a deep one, since the whole meringue has to be folded into this mixture in a few minutes and you need room to move a spatula through it.
Separating the eggs and building the yolk batter
Separate the eggs while they are cold, which is when the yolk membrane is firmest and least likely to break, then let both bowls come to room temperature for about 30 minutes. Check every white as it goes into the bowl: a single speck of yolk carries enough fat to stop a meringue from ever whipping properly. To the yolks add the water, the sunflower oil, the scraped vanilla seeds and the grated lemon zest, and beat with a whisk until the mixture is pale, smooth and slightly thickened.
Whisking the yolk batter into the dry ingredients
Pour the liquid yolk mixture into the bowl of dry ingredients all at once and whisk until the batter is smooth and has no dry pockets left, which takes under a minute. Stop there. You have just wetted flour and gluten is already forming, and every extra turn of the whisk from this point buys you a tougher, chewier crumb with no benefit whatsoever. The batter will look thin and will pour freely, which is correct and is exactly what the meringue is about to fix.
Whipping the whites with cream of tartar
Wipe the mixer bowl and the whisk with a piece of lemon or a little vinegar on kitchen paper and dry them, so no trace of fat remains. Start the whites on medium speed and whip until they are white, frothy and beginning to hold a shape, then add the cream of tartar and continue on medium high. Stop at firm peaks that curl over slightly at the tip and still look glossy and wet. If the surface starts to look matte, grainy or cracked you have gone too far and that meringue will fold in as lumps rather than disappearing into the batter.
Folding the meringue in three additions
Whisk about a third of the meringue straight into the yolk batter without any care at all. That first addition is sacrificial: its job is to lighten and loosen a batter that is much denser than the foam, so the rest can be folded in gently. Add the remaining meringue in two more goes with a large flexible spatula, cutting down through the centre, sweeping along the bottom of the bowl and lifting over the top while turning the bowl a quarter turn each time. Stop the moment the last white streak disappears. Some streaking is better than a deflated batter.
Filling the pan and baking for one hour
Pour the batter gently into the ungreased pan, easing rather than dropping it in, and smooth the surface with the back of the spatula. Draw a knife once through the batter in a slow circle to release any large trapped bubbles, then rap the pan very lightly on the counter, only once. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 60 minutes without opening the door for the first 45. The cake is done when the top is deep golden, feels springy and dry, the cracks that have opened across the surface look dry inside, and a skewer into the thickest part comes out clean.
Inverting the pan and cooling it upside down
The moment the pan leaves the oven, turn it upside down and stand it on its feet, or hang it over the neck of a bottle if your pan has no feet. Do this immediately, not after five minutes. The crumb at this point is set but very hot, very soft and full of gas cells at their maximum expansion, and left sitting upright it will sink under its own weight into a dense band near the base. Leave it hanging for at least 2 hours, until the pan is completely cold to the hand. There is no way to hurry this and no way to repair a cake that was cooled the right way up.
Releasing the cake and dusting it
Run a long thin bladed knife down between the cake and the outer wall of the pan, keeping the blade pressed hard against the metal and using a sawing motion rather than a levering one, then work the same knife around the central tube and along the base. Push the base up, free the cake from it and turn it out. Dust with confectioners sugar through a fine sieve held high above the cake so the sugar falls as a veil rather than in patches. Cut with a serrated knife, sawing gently, because pressing down on a crumb this open crushes it flat.
Plating
Serve it whole and undecorated on a flat plate or a wooden board, ring side up, dusted at the last minute so the sugar does not dissolve into the surface. This is a cake that is looked at before it is cut, and its entire visual argument is its height and the pale open crumb inside, so anything piled on top works against it. If the top cracked in the oven, leave the cracks alone. They are the correct appearance of a chiffon and covering them up is an admission of a problem that does not exist.
Portion it in thick wedges, at least 1 1/2 inches (4 cm) at the outer edge, using a serrated knife and a slow sawing action with no downward pressure. Thin slices fall apart and, worse, they dry within minutes of being cut, because the crumb is extremely open and has a great deal of exposed surface. Cut only what is going to be eaten and leave the rest of the ring intact, cut face pressed against a piece of parchment or plastic film.
For breakfast it needs nothing beyond coffee. As a dessert it takes a spoonful of lightly whipped unsweetened cream on the side, a few macerated strawberries or raspberries, or a thin lemon curd, all served beside the slice rather than over it so the crumb stays dry and springy. Late in the year a spoonful of chestnut or apricot preserve alongside works equally well. Do not soak it in syrup: the crumb is not built to take liquid and will collapse into a wet mat.
Professional Technique
Everything distinctive about a chiffon begins with using oil instead of butter, and the reason is physical chemistry rather than preference. Butter is roughly eighty percent fat and sixteen percent water, and its fat is a mixture of triglycerides that crystallise into a firm solid below about 68°F (20°C). A butter cake is therefore soft in a warm kitchen and noticeably firm the moment it cools, which is why so many of them are best eaten the day they are baked. Sunflower oil is pure fat with no water at all and stays fully liquid down to refrigerator temperature, so the crumb it coats is as tender on the third morning as on the first. The cost of that trade is that oil cannot hold air, and a batter made with it cannot be creamed, which is exactly why the eggs are separated and a meringue is folded in.
The cream of tartar is the second piece of real technique and it is not optional. Potassium bitartrate is an acid salt, and stirred into egg whites it drops their pH from around 9 down toward 5. That shift does two useful things. It brings the white proteins closer to the point where they unfold and bond readily, so the foam builds faster and holds more air, and it slows the excessive bonding of ovalbumin during baking, which is what would otherwise make a meringue go dry, grainy and prone to weeping. The practical effect is a much wider margin for error: an acidified white is far harder to overwhip into the dry cottony state that folds in as lumps, and it also bakes whiter.
The third is the pan and the inversion, which work as one idea. A batter this light has almost no structure of its own while it is rising, so it uses the bare metal wall as a ladder, gripping it and pulling itself upward as the steam and the baking powder expand it. Grease that wall and the batter slides back down, giving a squat cake with a compressed base, which is why a chiffon pan is never buttered and never lined. The central tube exists for the same reason in reverse: it carries oven heat into the middle of a deep, low density batter that would otherwise still be raw when the outside is dark. Turning the pan over the instant it leaves the oven then suspends the hot, soft, fully expanded crumb from its own grip on the walls, so it sets hanging under tension instead of settling under its own weight.
Texture and Moisture Control
This batter carries an unusual amount of liquid for its flour: 1 cup (240 ml) of water and 1/2 cup (120 ml) of oil against 2 1/3 cups (290 g) of flour. The water is not there to make the batter pourable, it is a leavening agent in its own right. Converted to steam in the oven it expands the cells that the meringue built, and that steam is responsible for a large share of the cake's final height. It is also why the oven door stays shut for the first 45 minutes, since a rush of cool air at the point of maximum expansion condenses that steam and drops the cake before its protein structure has set enough to hold.
Doneness is judged on four signs together rather than one. The top should be deep golden and spring back fully when pressed with a fingertip, the cracks across the surface should look dry rather than wet inside, a skewer pushed into the thickest part should come out clean, and if you use a probe the centre should read 205 to 210°F (96 to 99°C). Underbaking is the more common error and it shows up as a damp sunken band around the tube, since the crumb never gained the strength to hold itself through the cooling. Overbaking dries this cake quickly because it has no dairy solids to hold water.
Once cool, the enemy is the refrigerator. Starch in a baked crumb recrystallises fastest at temperatures a little above freezing, which means a chiffon goes stale several times faster in a refrigerator than it does in a covered dish on the counter. Keep it at room temperature, sealed, with any cut face covered, and it will still be genuinely soft on day three. The oil is doing the real work there, but it needs the cake to be kept out of the cold. If the kitchen is very warm and very humid, the sugar crust on top will soften and go slightly sticky, which is cosmetic and does not affect the crumb.
Professional Mise en Place
Once the meringue is whipped the clock runs, because a foam left standing begins to drain and separate within minutes. Everything else should be weighed, sifted, zested and within reach before the mixer is switched on.
Equipment and tools
Tube pan, 9 inch (23 cm) across and 5 inches (13 cm) deep, with a removable base and feet, left ungreased
Stand mixer or hand mixer with a whisk, plus a scrupulously clean grease free bowl for the whites
Large wide mixing bowl for the batter and a large flexible silicone spatula
Fine sieve for the flour and a second small one for dusting, kitchen scale, fine grater for the zest
Long thin bladed knife for releasing the cake, serrated knife for slicing, a bottle if the pan has no feet
Prepared ahead
Eggs separated while cold, then both bowls brought to room temperature for 30 minutes
Flour, baking powder, sugar and salt sifted and whisked together in the wide bowl
Lemon zested and vanilla bean split and scraped, kept covered so the aromatics do not dry out
Water and oil measured out, oven preheated for a full 20 minutes with the rack in the lower third
Service setup
A bottle or a cooling stand cleared and ready before the cake comes out, since inverting cannot wait
Cake left hanging for at least 2 hours and released only when the pan is cold to the hand
Confectioners sugar dusted at the last moment, never in advance, or it dissolves into the surface
Serrated knife and a flat plate ready, with parchment to press against any cut face
Chef Tips
Separate the eggs cold and whip them warm. The yolk membrane is firmest straight from the refrigerator, so the separation is cleaner and you are far less likely to drop yolk into the whites, while a white at room temperature is looser, foams faster and reaches a greater volume. Half an hour on the counter between the two operations is all it takes, and it is worth the wait.
Treat fat as the enemy of the meringue bowl. Wipe the bowl and the whisk with a cut lemon or a splash of white vinegar on kitchen paper and dry them before you start, use metal or glass rather than plastic, which holds a greasy film in its scratches, and discard the whole batch of whites if a piece of yolk goes in. Fishing it out with a shell rarely gets all of it, and whites that will not rise cannot be rescued.
Do not open the oven door for the first 45 minutes, whatever your instinct says. The cake is at its most vulnerable during the long expansion phase, and a draught of cool air at that point collapses the steam inside the cells before the egg proteins have set enough to keep the structure standing. Use the oven light and look through the glass instead, and test only once you are past the three quarter mark.
Keep the additions honest if you want to flavour it. Chocolate chips, raisins and chopped candied peel all work if they are tossed in a spoonful of the measured flour first so they do not sink, and orange zest can replace the lemon. What does not work is adding more liquid, more fat or a wet fruit purée: the batter is balanced to the gram and extra moisture shows up as a heavy sunken ring around the tube.
Common Mistakes
Greasing or lining the tube pan. The batter has to grip the bare metal in order to climb it, and a film of butter, oil or baking spray means it slides instead, giving a short dense cake with a compacted base. Leave the pan completely untreated and wash it in hot soapy water if it previously held something rich.
Whipping the whites to dry stiff peaks. Once the surface turns matte and grainy the foam has gone past its useful point and will fold in as visible lumps that never disperse, leaving white streaks and hollow patches in the baked crumb. Stop at firm glossy peaks that curl slightly at the tip.
Folding until the batter looks perfectly uniform. Every extra stroke past the disappearance of the last white streak deflates the foam you just spent five minutes creating, and a deflated chiffon bakes short and rubbery. A faint streak or two is far less damaging than a batter folded smooth.
Cooling the cake the right way up. The crumb leaves the oven set but soft and fully expanded, and standing upright it compresses under its own weight into a dense sunken band. Invert the pan the second it comes out of the oven and leave it hanging until it is stone cold, a minimum of 2 hours.
Opening the oven door early. Cool air during the first three quarters of the bake condenses the steam that is holding the cells open and drops the cake before the proteins have set. Keep the door shut for the first 45 minutes and judge progress through the glass.
Overmixing the batter after the flour goes in. Gluten starts forming the moment the liquid meets the flour, and a chiffon whisked for two minutes instead of one comes out chewy and tight rather than tender. Whisk only until no dry pockets remain, then stop.
Storing the cake in the refrigerator. Cold accelerates the staling of a baked crumb dramatically, and a chiffon kept chilled is dry and crumbly by the second day despite all the oil in it. Keep it sealed at room temperature, or freeze it properly if you need longer than three days.
Wine Pairing
Moscato d'Asti DOCG: Low in alcohol, gently frothing and full of the grape's own orange blossom and sage scent, it meets the lemon zest in this cake head on without competing with it. The soft bubble lifts a crumb that is dry by design, and the sweetness stays moderate enough not to overwhelm a cake that carries no icing. Serve it very cold, at 43°F (6°C).
Colli Orientali del Friuli Picolit DOCG: A rare and expensive Friulian sweet wine, and the right choice when the chiffon is the whole dessert rather than breakfast. Picolit is delicate rather than unctuous, with acacia honey, peach skin and a distinct floral lift, which suits a cake whose flavour is subtle and would be buried by a heavier bottle. Its acidity keeps the pairing from turning cloying.
Romagna Albana DOCG: In its passito form Albana brings apricot, dried yellow plum and a faint bitter almond note on the finish, and that bitterness is what makes it interesting against a plain sponge. It also carries a light phenolic grip unusual in a sweet white, which stops the pairing from being merely sugar on sugar. A classic Romagna partner for dry breakfast cakes.
Alto Adige Gewürztraminer DOC: The dry version, which is the surprise on this list. Its rose petal, lychee and candied citrus aromatics create the impression of sweetness without actually delivering it, so it flatters the vanilla and lemon while leaving the palate clean. The generous body stands up to the oil in the crumb better than a lean white would.
Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG: Choose a dry or extra dry bottling rather than a brut, which would read as sour beside the cake. Its pear and white flower fruit and fine persistent bubble refresh between forkfuls of a crumb that is open and slightly drying, and it is the most versatile option if the chiffon is being served to a table of people at the end of a long lunch.
Storage & Reheating
Keep the cake at room temperature under a cake dome or in an airtight container, with any cut face pressed against parchment or plastic film, and it will stay genuinely soft for 3 days and remain acceptable on the fourth. Do not refrigerate it. Cold speeds up the staling of the crumb far more than it slows anything else, and a chiffon kept in the refrigerator is noticeably dry and crumbly by the second day despite all the oil it contains. Do not wrap it until it is completely cold, because trapped warmth turns the crust sticky.
For longer storage the freezer is excellent and the refrigerator remains useless. Freeze the ring whole, wrapped first in plastic film and then in foil, or cut it into wedges and freeze them on a tray before bagging them, which lets you take out one slice at a time. It keeps its quality for 1 month. Thaw wrapped at room temperature for about 2 hours for a whole cake or 30 minutes for a slice, and dust with fresh confectioners sugar afterwards, since the first dusting will have melted away.
There is no reheating as such, but a slice that has gone slightly past its best is easily revived. Give it 4 to 5 minutes in an oven at 300°F (150°C), which drives a little moisture back through the crumb and freshens the aroma of lemon and vanilla, and eat it within a few minutes because it will firm up again as it cools a second time. A microwave also works at 10 seconds on low, though the texture goes faintly rubbery. Slices that have dried out beyond that are better toasted lightly and served with cream.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 8 servings from one tube cake:
Calories: 460 kcal
Total Fat: 18 g
Saturated Fat: 2.6 g
Trans Fat: 0 g
Unsaturated Fat: 15 g
Cholesterol: 140 mg
Sodium: 75 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 65 g
Fiber: 1 g
Total Sugars: 39 g
Added Sugars: 39 g
Protein: 8 g
Lactose: 0 g
Principal micronutrients: vitamin E from the sunflower oil, choline, selenium, riboflavin, folate, phosphorus, iron
These figures are estimates. Worth noting is the lactose figure, which is genuinely zero: there is no butter, no milk and no cream anywhere in this cake, so it suits a lactose intolerant table without any substitution at all. The cholesterol, by contrast, is high because six yolks are divided between only eight slices.
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