Chocolate Chiffon Cake

Combine the cocoa and boiling water and then set it aside to cool – I did this about an hour before.  Preheat oven to 325, DO NOT grease your 10 inch tube pan, just have it ready, and separate the eggs while they’re cold and then let the whites come to room temperature – this will give the best volume.

In a large bowl, whisk together the cake flour, sugar, baking soda and salt and then use a spatula to make a well in the middle.  Beat the egg whites with the cream of tartar using your electric mixer until they form very stiff peaks – do NOT under beat – a spatula should leave a clean line.  This will take a few minutes and then you can have the rest of the cake ready.

To the dry ingredient ‘well’, add the oil, vanilla, yolks and cooled cocoa mixture and beat well with a sturdy spatula until there is no trace of flour and the mixture is smooth.

When the egg whites are ready, carefully and slowly pour the wet mixture over the entire surface of the egg whites, cutting and gently folding the batter together with a spatula.  Continue to fold gently, making sure to rotate the bowl, until it’s completely blended and then pour the batter into your ungreased pan and smooth the top.

Bake for 1 hour at 325 and then turn the heat up to 350 and bake for another 10 minutes.  The surface will be cracked, (the cake should just reach the top of the pan) and the top should bounce right back when lightly touched.  Don’t let anyone run or jump around your house when this is baking!

Immediately invert the cake so that the center bit is balanced on a funnel and the whole cake is hanging upside down but not touching anything but the funnel – it needs to stay this way until it cools completely.

Carefully loosen any visible bit of cake from any visible bit of pan that it’s touching, using your thinnest spatula – the cake should then basically fall out of the pan with the bottom tray still attached.  Use the same method to loosen it from the bottom tray and you should have a pretty good-looking cake.  If you need to operate because a couple of chunks were left behind, this is where the whipped cream as icing can be used to tidy things up.  Decorate as desired and enjoy! – though both Brock and I feel that it would be nice to always have one of these in the freezer to have with vanilla ice cream and Chocolate Sauce whenever we felt like it…