TWD: Baking with Julia - Vanilla Chiffon Roll

To be honest, this week's Tuesday's with Dorie recipe filled me with trepidation.  Vanilla Chiffon Roll.  Yikes.  Chiffon means beaten egg whites which means lots of folding.  And folding is just something that I am not very confident about.  I need a hands-on class on folding.  Origami?  Yeah, I can probably figure that out from a book.  Folding ingredients?  Not so much.  HOWEVER, I think I did a good job this time.  (Though I am not 100% sure...)  We'll just go with the idea that I did a good job, ok?

Anyway, the first thing to know about this cake is that it is filled with a chocolate-walnut mousse.  YUM.  I mean, YUM.   Toasted walnuts, walnut oil, melted bittersweet chocolate, egg yolks, sugar, water and heavy cream come together to make this marvelous, delicious mousse.  I will admit that I got distracted when whipping the cream so it got a bit OVER-whipped, but not so bad and I was still able to make a mousse (and not butter) so that was a relief!  Baking, among many many other things, can be problematic on sleep deprivation. The clever baby is already 9 months old, and he is getting teeth like gangbusters which leads to lots of waking, thus very little sleep for me.  I do find that sleep deprivation is a very good sort of torture - it does crazy things to the brain.  But that is not the topic for today, the Vanilla Chiffon Roll is, isn't it?  I am side-tracked already....

I made the mousse with relatively good success and set about making the scary vanilla chiffon cake.  And to be honest, I think the method was quite good and I ended up with very puffy batter.  HOWEVER (you knew there would be a however, didn't you?), the baking time on this recipe is just ridiculous.  Crazy.  Not at all accurate.  When the timer went off, that internal baking voice of mine said, "this is NOT done", so I let it cook a bit longer.  Then the timer went off again and again my internal voice said NO, but alas, I did not listen.  I was so scared of ruining my thus far successful chiffon by OVER-baking, that I decided that surely the time couldn't be THAT off and I removed the pan from the oven.  Mistake.  I let it cool and ended up with a VERY moist (moist is a nice word - instead of soggy and almost gummy) cake.  GRRRR!  I should have listened to that internal voice!  Ugh.  The next day, I zipped to the grocery store by our house to get MORE eggs (chiffon cakes take bunches) and began again.  This time I did an even better job with the folding and had a quite puffy, voluminous batter.  I baked this baby for TWICE the amount of time the recipe suggested.  For reference, the recipe said 10-12 minutes (CRAZY TALK) and I baked the second one for 22 minutes.  And honestly, it probably could have gone longer!  However it was browned on top and if I really loosely define the term "pulling away from the edges of the pan", I could accept it was done.  Again, I was getting scared about ruining the cake.  I let it cool and it remained a bit moist on the bottom... maybe a chiffon cake is supposed to be this moist?  Humph.

Did I mention that the cake is baked in a half-sheet pan?  Well, it is.  So it turns into this giant thin rectangular cake which I then flipped about in an elaborate way to get the cake right side up on the BOTTOM side of the sheet pan, instead of on the INSIDE of the sheet pan.  Then I spread that heavenly mousse all over the cake.  Roll it up and put it in the refrigerator overnight and the next day I have this amazing, beautiful cake!

Another weird thing about this recipe - it says it makes only 6 servings.  6!  Let me remind you that a sheet pan is approximately 12 x 17-inches.  And you roll this cake up long-wise, so you end up with a cake roll that is 17 inches long.  And I am supposed to cut that into only 6 slices?  That would make for some really large pieces, in my opinion.  I think you could easily get 10-12 servings from this cake.  Reasonable, appropriate servings that look a lot more like the photo in the book.

Would I make this cake again?  I am not sure.  It was delicious, yes, but I am not 100% sold on the cake part.  I wish I knew what texture the cake was supposed to be, because I think it would have been better if it were less moist.  That would give more contrast between the cake and the mouse, thus highlight each separate part as you chew.  The jury is out I suppose.

I learned something though...  When my inner baking voice is screaming at me, I need to listen.

Two questions for my fellow bakers:  What other fabulous uses do you suggest for my new large can of walnut oil?  And what is the texture of this cake supposed to be??   

To see what my fellow TWD bloggers thought of this cake, go to the TWD blog and click on "LYL:  Vanilla Chiffon Roll".  You'll find links to everyone's posts!