Sweet & Savory Kitchens

Margaux says…

Snow day + uneaten grapefruits = cake.

Actually, add in there that I kind of owe my husband, Jason, a cake for catering to my whims and painting our daughter’s room in multi-color chevron stripes, which was NOT an easy task.  It looks great, though!  So he deserves a cake.  (I’ll take any excuse, right?)

Uneaten grapefruits because of Desi.  I bought a big bag of them because they were one of the few fruits left on the fast diminishing list of things he deems edible. Then three grapefruits into the bag he scratched grapefruits off the list.  So, being the only person working her way through this giant bag, I got tired of grapefruit, too and needed to do something else with them.  So I juiced and zested them and starting looking for ideas.  (PS. zesting grapefruits makes your house smell AMAZING.  I felt like I was in a tropical paradise in the middle of a gross Chicago winter.)

This is actually a recipe I’ve been wanting to make for a couple years, gotten from the New York Times Magazine, for a yuzu chiffon cake.  But I needed a recipe for grapefruit, and part of the reason why I haven’t made this cake yet is because who the heck has yuzus?  Well, at the bottom of the recipe it says you can substitue Meyer lemons for the yuzus.  But Wikipedia says that the closest thing to a yuzu is a grapefruit.  So I’m going with Wikipedia.  And whether that’s true or not, the cake turned out DELICIOUS.  (Of course, it helps that the chocolate glaze is like rich dark chocolate pudding smothered all over the cake.  YUM.)  For the rest of my grapefruit juice, I’m going to make a grapefruit pound cake from Smitten Kitchen.  Can’t wait.

So I took advantage of the fact that Jason stayed home from work today to do the dishes (again) and make a cake KID FREE before he disappeared upstairs to work a little.  Can I add that I am so sick of doing dishes??

You will need a tube pan for this, with a removable bottom (like an angel food cake pan). It won’t work in a regular cake pan because it will fall in the middle.

Grapefruit Chiffon Cake with Dark Chocolate Glaze

For the cake:

1¾ cups sifted all-purpose flour

¼ cup cornstarch

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 cup fresh squeezed grapefruit juice, squeezed

1 tbsp grapefruit zest

1½ cups sugar

1 teaspoon salt

7 eggs, separated

¼ cup oil

¾ cup plain yogurt

½ teaspoon cream of tartar

For the glaze:

1/2 cup unsalted butter

½ cup milk

½ cup sugar

½ cup unsweetened, nonalkalized cocoa powder

½ teaspoon salt.

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Have ready a 9 or 10″ tube pan. Sift flour, cornstarch and baking powder at least 5 times. Add yuzu zest, sugar and salt and stir to combine. In a separate bowl, whisk together egg yolks, strained grapefruit juice and oil. Add to flour mixture. Using a spatula, add yogurt and stir until smooth. Using a hand mixer or stand mixer, beat egg whites and cream of tartar to soft peaks. Quickly and gently fold 1/4 of the egg whites into batter until you no longer see streaks of white, then fold in the rest until no streaks remain. Pour into prepared tube pan. Bake for 55 minutes, until cake springs back when lightly pressed. Let cool in pan set on a baking rack for 2 hours.

2. Meanwhile, make the glaze. Melt butter in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Add milk, sugar, cocoa powder and salt. Whisk until incorporated. Once it reaches a low boil, whisk gently for 1 minute and remove from heat. Let come to room temperature.

3. Twenty minutes before frosting the cake, put the ganache in the refrigerator until firm (I didn’t do this, but my kitchen is very chilly). Gently remove cake from pan. Pour the ganache over the cake, covering the top and drizzling it over the sides and in the center.