The Light And Airy Lemon Cake Everyone Ate In The 1970s

When it comes to old-fashioned desserts, one cake always pleased if you brought it to a party in the '70s: lemon chiffon cake. This retro treat took the cake due to several factors — but mainly it's known for its light and airy texture, rich and lemony flavor, and signature tubular shape. At first glance, a lemon chiffon cake might look like light and fluffy angel food cake (which has been around since the late 1800s, but traditionally doesn't contain much fat). Like angel food cake, lemon chiffon cake gets its pillow-like texture from folding whipped egg whites into the cake batter. However, what sets chiffon cake apart is its use of egg yolks and vegetable oil, which makes the cake taste rich and light simultaneously. 

Lemon chiffon cake was among the best once-popular desserts of the 1970s and the surrounding decades, an era impacted by home baking. While the recipe is said to have been invented by a man named Harry Baker in 1927, General Mills purchased the recipe for chiffon cake in 1947, and then it was popularized via publication in Better Homes & Gardens magazine in May 1948. The recipe continued to gain popularity in the following decades. By the '70s, the lemon chiffon cake was already a common dessert recipe staple in homes — as was the tube-shaped cake tin that gave the cake its signature look and helped it bake evenly in the middle (though, if needed, you can make lemon chiffon cake in other cake pans).

Part of the intrigue of a chiffon cake is its simplicity. While the recipe is not fussy, there are a few techniques that are key to achieving the vintage cake's signature lightness. For instance, if you find a scribbled family recipe for lemon chiffon cake from the '70s, you'll see that the cake uses both baking powder and whipped egg whites beaten separately from the egg yolks in the batter, and these ingredients give the cake its ample rise. Some recipes also call for cream of tartar, which generally adds extra structural support to whipped egg whites in addition to the sugar. Recipes also usually instruct the baker to invert the pan after baking the cake to avoid deflating or sinking, keeping the cake's open crumb structure intact.  

As for flavor, adding lemon juice and zest to the batter gives chiffon cake a perfect zesty taste that wonderfully complements the richness from the oil used to bake the cake. While there were other popular versions of chiffon cake (take, for instance, orange chiffon cake or light green pandan chiffon cake), lemon chiffon was easy to make with pantry ingredients and a lemon from the fridge or fruit bowl. In short, it was — and still is, though less popular today — an everyday cake. Topped with powdered sugar or a simple glaze and lemon zest, lemon chiffon cake is light, airy, and simply delicious.