A chiffon cake is a very light cake made with vegetable oil, eggs, sugar, flour, baking powder, and flavorings. Unlike butter, the traditional fat used in cake making, it is difficult to beat air into oil, so chiffon cakes, like angel cakes and other foam cakes, achieve a fluffy texture by beating egg whites until stiff, and folding them into the cake batter before baking. The high oil and egg content creates a very moist cake, and as oil is liquid even at cooler temperatures, chiffon cakes don't tend to harden or dry out as traditional butter cakes might. This makes them much better-suited than many cakes to filling or frosting with ingredients that need

to be refrigerated or frozen, such as pastry cream or ice cream. Chiffon cakes also tend to be lower in saturated fat than butter cakes, making them potentially more healthy than their butter-heavy counterparts. The lack of butter, however, means that chiffon cakes lack much of the rich flavor of butter cakes, and they are hence typically served accompanied with flavorful sauces or other accompaniments, such as chocolate or fruit fillings.

The chiffon cake was invented in 1927 by a California insurance salesman named Harry Baker, who also ran a small, part-time cake catering business. Mr. Baker used his recipe in catering, but didn't disclose it to the public until he sold it to Betty Crocker in 1948. Crocker proclaimed the chiffon cake to be the "cake discovery of the century."