After a 4 month, wedding induced hiatus (God, that’s a long time), I’m back to Baking with Julia with this very labor intensive Nectarine Upside-Down Chiffon cake. For the complete recipe check out this post from Little French Bakery
I’ll say it right now, not going to be making this one again. The process wasn’t so terribly hard or even that long (only took me 1 1/2 hrs), but the results are just kinda meh.
Now there are a few things I probably could have done differently to make this more of a delight. For starters, I used peaches instead of nectarines. It’s September and they were out of nectarines for the season at my local farm stand. The peaches they had were sort of bottom of the barrel and they weren’t completely ripe when I made this recipe. Fail #1.
Secondly, I did not have a 10 inch spring-form pan so used my 9 inch instead. Following tips from other bakers, I didn’t pour in all the batter, but there was sooo much batter left over that something just didn’t seem right. Hmmm. Fail #2.
Last but not least, this was the first time I made a meringue and while I think I whipped the eggs white to stiff peaked perfection, I don’t think I properly mixed the whites into the yolk batter for fear of over mixing and deflating all that beautiful egg white fluffiness. Perhaps this failure to properly mix is what caused the horrible burning smell to emanate from my oven at only minute 33 of the 45-55 minute bake time.
Horrible burned cake top. Thought it was a goner at this point.
Despite the burning of the top which actually becomes the bottom, the cake tastes pretty good. And happily the burned part is kept out of site when you flip it over onto your plate or cake stand. If the peaches had been riper this might have been a winner, but as it is, I’m pretty luke-warm on the results. A lot of work for a so-so finish, BUT, I really enjoyed seeing plain old egg whites turn into a marshmellowy cloud.
I remember watching Christopher Kimball of “America’s Test Kitchen” demonstrate how to make the perfect chiffon cake. I need to go back and revisit that show because I’d love to try my hand at making this type of cake again without the added steps of this Julia Child recipe.
Library, PA 