Matcha Red Bean Chiffon Cake

• Follow the recipe for honey red beans or use store-bought
• Make sure your chiffon cake pan does not have a non-stick coating or your cake will not rise. The cake needs to cling to the side of the pan to rise tall
• Before you start making the recipe, make sure eggs and milk are at room temperature

Prepare cake batter:

• Preheat your oven to 330 F (165 C) for conventional oven (bottom heat only). If you have top and bottom heat, you may want to adjust the temperature by lowering the temperature by 15-20 degrees. Separate the egg yolks from the whites while they are cold. They are easier to separate. Then let them come to room temperature. The meringue whips better at room temperature
• In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks, sugar, milk and cooking oil until combined. Sift in the cake flour, matcha powder, and salt into the batteWhisk to mix into a smooth batter. Set aside

Prepare meringue:

• Place the egg whites in a clean mixing bowl. I use a stand mixer with a whisk attachment. You will have trouble whipping your meringue if there's a trace of grease in your utensils or bowls
• Beat the egg whites on medium speed until frothy, add lemon juice/vinegar and whip until it turns whitish and air bubbles are fine. Gradually add the sugar as you beat, in 3 batches. I beat them at medium speed (speed 6 on Kitchen Aid). This will take a bit longer compared to beating at high speed. I used to do higher speed (speed 8), but the meringue is smoother and nicer when I maintain the speed on 6. I highly recommend stopping several times to check on the consistency and scraping the sides of the bowl to make sure no sugar left on the side of the bowl. Whip until you reach a stiff peak but still have a slight bent on the tip. Then lower the speed to 4 and whip for 1 minute to even out large bubbles and stop beating. The meringue should be glossy and smooth
• If you beat until the meringue clumps on the whisk attachment in one HUGE chunk/lump, you know you've gone too far beating the meringue. You will have to start over when you overbeat the meringue. If you use it, the meringue will separate when you fold it into the yolk batter and won't hold much air and your cake will deflate later

Fold meringue into the cake batter:

• Gently fold 1/3 of the meringue into the thick batter. Using a whisk, using a cutting motion and fold over to mix. Repeat this motion several rounds. Continue on with the second 1/3  of the meringue again to mix. For the last 1/3 of the meringue, use a rubber spatula instead to ensure you get all the batter at the bottom of the bowl mixed in as well. Use a cut down in the middle and fold over motion to fold gently but quickly. Make sure you don't see any more white meringue. The mixture should be fluffy and voluminous.

Coat red beans with some cake flour:

• Coat the red bean pieces with cake flour and sift out any excess. This helps most of the red beans to stay "floated" during baking. I don't do this earlier because the red beans will make the flour "wet" if they sit for too long. Very gently fold this into the cake batter using a spatula
• Pour the batter into an UNGREASED chiffon cake pan. Use a rubber spatula to smooth the surface if necessary. Gently drop the cake pan from about 10 cm height on the counter 2-3 times to even out the batter and to pop large air bubbles inside the cake. Use a skewer to draw a zig zag to pop bubbles inside the cake batter.

Bake the cake:

• Pop into the oven and let it bake at 330 F for 60 minutes or until the cake is dry to touch and springs back when you gently press on it. This cake has a bit higher moisture content and so it's important that it's not underbaked to ensure the cake won't deflate when you take it out from the oven
• If it sounds too "foamy" when you press on the cake, bake another 5 minutes and test by inserting a skewer into the cake. It should come out clean without any wet crumbs
• Don't be alarm if your cake has some cracks on top. What you are looking at will become the bottom of your cake. I know many people mind it a lot and make a big fuss when the top of the chiffon cake cracks, but actually it's not a flaw

Invert the cake to cool down:

• Once out of the oven, drop the cake pan from about 10 cm height on the counter several times to prevent shrinkage. Then carefully invert the pan upside down immediately. Your chiffon pan may have the little stands for you to invert, but I find it not high enough. I use a glass jar and set the inverted pan on top of the jar and let it cool down completely. Please don't be tempted to remove from the pan if it's still warm. It takes about one to two hours to cool down completely

Unmolding the cake:

• Once it's cool down completely, use a spatula knife to run through the edge and the outer center of the tube to help release the cake. Gently push the base to lift the cake out. Use the knife again to run through the base of the pan and then carefully release the cake

Optional: Prepare drip cream (on the day you want to serve the cake):

• Make sure the heavy cream is chilled and the mixing bowl is chilled too. Put heavy cream and sugar in the bowl and whip on medium speed until the cream is thick but has very soft peak, like a consistency of a yogurt. You DO NOT want to beat to stiff peak
• At this point you can either fold in the honey red beans using a spatula or decorate it separately on top as shown in the photo. You can also use sweet red bean paste if you prefer and fold it into the whipped cream. Once you decorate the cake with cream, it needs to be refrigerated

Decorate the cake:

• Gently spread the cream on top of the cake and use an offset spatula to spread the cream to cover the top of the cake and then push it towards the edge of the cake so it flows down to the side of the cake, just enough to let the cream drip down halfway. The cream is actually flowy but thick enough to hold its position and not drip down any further. Scatter some honey beans on top if you choose not to fold them into the cream earlier. Once decorated with cream, you need to refrigerate any leftover

You can serve the cream on the side instead of decorating the cake:

• Another alternative is you can slice the cake and then serve with the red bean cream. That way you can store the cake at room temperature and store the red bean cream in the fridge until you are ready to serve the cake