Chinese New Year has came and almost gone...two more days and then two whole months of work, work, work without any more public holidays in between!:P Sounds depressing lol! At least now that everything is back to normal routine, I have some free time to bake this ogura cake for the Little Thumbs Up event currently using lemon as the compulsory ingredient. As usual I chose to bake instead of cooking a savory dish, falling back on a familiar recipe, the ogura cake.
It is easy to prepare and so light, one feels less guilty eating it...as usual I visited Kimmy's blog to try her many ogura recipes and found 3 posts on this cake! Must be very delicious if she baked it so many times huh. So here we go...
Lemon Poppy Seeds Ogura
adapted from Cooking Pleasure
Serving size: 58g (148 calories based on a 2000 calorie diet)
Ingredients for Egg Yolk Mixture
[use 8" square tin] I used a 7" square and ended up having extra batter which I baked into two paper cups
75 gm superfine flour - sifted
1/4 tsp salt
5 egg yolks
1 whole egg
60 ml corn oil
30 ml lemon juice
50 ml milk
1 tsp lemon zest
2 tsp poppy seeds
Place the dry ingredients in the mixing bowl and make well in the centre. Add in eggs, corn oil, lemon juice, zest and milk. Using a paddle hook, beat ingredients until creamy and well combined. (I just used a hand whisk) Set aside.
Pour 1 and 1/2 cups water into baking tray, place baking rack on the tray and preheat oven at 160 degrees C for 10 minutes.
Ingredients for Egg White Mixture
5 egg whites
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
65 gm castor sugar
Using an electric mixer, whisk egg white until frothy, add in cream of tartar and whisk until slightly foamy. Add in sugar in 3 batches. Whisk until soft to stiff peaks formed.
Using a spatula, fold in 1/2 of the meringue into egg yolk mixture. Lift and fold until well combined, then add to rest of meringue. Add in the poppy seeds. Fold again until well mix.
Pour batter into a 8" square tin [line base with baking paper at the bottom only].
Smooth the surface with a spatula or shake a little and the batter will spread out evenly.
Steam bake in oven at 160 degrees C for 40 minutes, lower heat to 140 degrees C and bake for a further 20 minutes. (I baked mine at 150 C for 40 minutes and lower to 140 C for another 30 minutes.)
[Note: for the water bath, use 1 to 1 and 1/2 cups water for the duration of baking. This way the cake base will not be soggy after baking].
Remove cake and invert it after baking on a wire rack and let it cool slightly [about 5 minutes] before removing the pan and baking paper [there maybe some vapour on the baking paper].
Cool cake completely before slicing to serve or refrigerate before slicing to serve later.
I'm linking this post to Little Thumbs Up, ingredient for this month is Lemons, an event organized by Zoe of Bake For Happy Kids and Doreen of My Little Favourite D.I.Y. and hosted by Grace of Life Can Be Simple
