In 1927, an Ohio-born insurance salesman named Harry Baker, having moved to Los Angeles seeking a change, came up with a revolutionary cake recipe. Folding whipped egg whites into a batter enriched with yolks and vegetable oil, he discovered, yielded a sponge that was springy, extravagantly tall and remarkably moist — a striking contrast to the stark, fat-free angel food that dominated dessert menus at the time. From his small home kitchen, he supplied his so-called chiffon cakes — named after the airy, ethereal fabric — to the Brown Derby restaurant, where they became a sensation. In 1947, Baker sold his previously top-secret formula to General Mills, launching the chiffon to nationwide fame. Over time, its popularity waned as the American palate shifted toward denser, more buttery cakes, but the style endured in Asian bakeries, where it’s prized for its delicate crumb, subtle sweetness and versatility.
Now, with Asian flavors like grassy pandan and toasty hojicha gaining popularity in the Western pastry world, and the ubiquitous pictures of towering cakes attracting attention on social media, chiffon is experiencing a broader resurgence. Natasha Pickowicz, 40, a Brooklyn-based chef and the author of “More Than Cake” (2023), grew up in California eating chiffon cakes from the Asian grocery chain 99 Ranch Market. She uses chiffon almost exclusively in her layered confections, baking thin slabs in sheet pans, brushing them with fragrant syrups and sandwiching them between velvety mousses and aerated creams. “Chiffon is a perfect receptacle for building flavor because it has this ephemeral quality but also enough structure to absorb soaks, which add dimension and depth,” she says. Mina Park, 32, a Brooklyn-based baker, praises chiffon’s ability to sop up thick, dairy-rich liquids and recently used it in a tres leches cake featuring Thai iced tea and barely sweetened whipped cream.
The Brooklyn-based baker Peter Hunter Meckel’s chiffon cake iced with Italian meringue buttercream.Credit…Photograph by Anthony Cotsifas. Set design by Martin Bourne
For other bakers, chiffon’s primary attraction is its incomparable loftiness, achieved through a combination of chemical leaveners and a meringue-fortified batter that expands dramatically when baked. The cakes are traditionally made in ungreased aluminum tube pans, which allow the batter to cling and climb. “It’s big and billowy, so there’s something very celebratory about it,” says Helen Goh, a London-based recipe developer and food writer who grew up eating pandan chiffon cake, a popular confection in her native Malaysia. This past winter, she made a lychee-flavored version for Lunar New Year. “It’s so tender that you can squish it, but it bounces back,” she adds. “There’s a certain magical quality to it.”
Peter Hunter Meckel, 36, a Brooklyn-based baker inspired by the grandeur of Victorian-era sweets, uses chiffon in his outsize sculptural cakes adorned with edible strings of pearls and portraits of imaginary duchesses. Creating his signature sweets — which he’s made for weddings and fashion world parties — required a fair amount of trial and error. Whipping egg whites to just the right frothiness for maximum height takes practice, he says, and, because chiffon is prone to collapsing under weight, layered cakes can require meticulous engineering, including reinforcement with dowels and cardboard. Still, Meckel is drawn to chiffon’s airy delicacy and notes that its sugar-to-flour ratio is lower than that of traditional butter cakes. “A lot of desserts are just so sweet you can’t eat very much of them,” he says. “This is a nice change of pace.”
Meckel’s four-tiered confection has a fresh raspberry filling and is trimmed with edible pearls.Credit…Photograph by Anthony Cotsifas. Set design by Martin Bourne
