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Castella
Castella is a Japanese honey cake. I love it because it is so simple but so delicious. Castella is not as easy to make as it looks, because it can shrink or the texture may come out not as fluffy. However, the cause of these mistakes is easy to fix. It's not because you need bread flour or because you need a traditional wooden castella mould. It's really simple techniques that you might miss at each step, like making sure to get rid of the air bubbles. Just follow my recipe below and you'll have a perfectly tasty and good-looking castella!
Here is a video of me slicing it:
CASTELLA (Makes one 8x8 cake)
Ingredients
65g sugar
65g sugar (Yes, again, separately)
2 tbsp. milk
2 tsp. mirin, which is sweet rice wine (맛술, 미림)
4 tsp. vegetable oil 4 room-temp. eggs, separated
40g honey
120g all-purpose flour Instructions 1. Cut out a square piece of parchment for bottom of pan. Butter parchment lightly with oil and place that side up. Don't line the whole pan, because we want the castella to stick to the sides and not shrink as it cools.
2. Add milk, honey, corn syrup, oil, and mirin to a small bowl, stir with a spoon, and microwave for 30 seconds.
3. Add egg yolks to another large bowl and beat with a hand-mixer on low to loosen. Add sugar and beat to incorporate.
4. Place this bowl on top of another bowl filled with hot water and beat the egg mixture for 3 minutes on medium high speed until very thick and pale.
5. Remove the egg bowl from hot water, add the milk mixture in thin streams, and beat to incorporate.
6. Sift in the flour and quickly and gently whisk by hand just until incorporated.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
7. In another large bowl, beat egg whites on high speed until white and foamy. Add sugar little by little and continue to beat to firm but soft peaks.
8. Add meringue in three additions to the egg yolk mixture and gently whisk just until incorporated until each addition. 9. With a spatula, give the batter a scraping/folding from the edges. Reach the bottom of the bowl as well. Drop the bowl from a height to pop air bubbles. Repeat this step a few times.
10. Pour the batter in a thin stream holding the bowl high above the prepared pan. You should see air bubbles popping.
11. Wait about 10 seconds before banging the pan on the counter to pop even more air bubbles.
12. Bake for 25 minutes just until golden brown and a toothpick inserted to the center comes out clean.
13. After the pan comes out of the oven, immediately drop it from a height. Then as the surface begins to wrinkle, invert it onto a wooden board and let it rest until it cools.
14. Unmold the cake from the pan with a knife around the edges, and place on a serving plate. Let the side where you peeled off the parchment be the top.
15. Cut the cake into slices as shown in this video and enjoy with tea or milk!
Recipe from a Korean cookbook named 진짜 기본 베이킹 책 by super recipes. http://www.super-recipe.co.kr/etc_06/etc_s4_01.php?inc=view&idx=130&tbname=notice