Can you guess what this is? It’s supposed to be a castella cake (a Japanese sponge cake). Obviously it isn’t. My second attempt at making castella cake came out even worse than my first.
The cake came out really dense. It still tastes good, but it is very dense and sort of chewy. My previous attempt at castella cake didn’t come out right either. The first one was more like a pound cake. On this attempt, I tried using bread flour because I saw a lot of other recipes had called for bread flour. I think this is what made the cake even more dense. This cake looks more like mochi than like cake.
I’ve seen other castella recipes but they require more eggs and more time. I was trying to avoid that, but I guess I will have to try a different recipe next time.
The recipe I used can be found here. My tweaks were using bread flour and adding 2 tbsp of matcha powder. Does anyone have any good castella cake recipe recommendations?
I agree that cake flour should be used for a fluffier cake. The only suggestion I would make is to make the batter with egg yolks and whipping the egg whites until stiff and folding it into the egg yolk batter since the recipe doesn’t container another leavening agent. My grandma used to make a similar looking cake, but it was baked in a tube pan rather than in a square or rectangle pan. Her recipe contained a lot of eggs as you mentioned but no milk. And she didn’t use a measuring cup, she had a “special bowl” which was basically one of those blue/white Chinese rice bowls to measure the dry ingredients. Good luck on the next attempt!
I was thinking about doing the egg whites separately. That’s what I do for chiffon cakes, which I bake in a tube pan. But I think if I do that, it basically will be a chiffon cake rather than a castella cake. Thanks for the suggestions!
As an aspiring fellow baker, I suggest using flour with a lower protein content. You’re right, bread flour will make a baked good denser. Cake flour is good for castella and chiffon and other light airy cakes. Though these look good too. Will be giving it a try ^^. Best of luck.
You know I would have thought cake flour as well, which is why I was so surprised that I saw other recipes calling for bread flour. Anyhow, this cake actually tastes pretty good with regular flour, but it just ends up tasting like a pound cake rather than a castella cake. I wouldn’t use bread flour again but I’d probably use all purpose flour to make a green tea pound cake.