Abstract: Under the traditional hot air baking conditions，the chiffon cake，which is made of high highland bar-ley powder，is difficult to expand and easy to produce wet flesh inside． Besides，it has other problems such as un-stable product structure，rough taste and so on． To solve these peoblems，the effect of microwave pre-expansion combined with hot air baking on the quality of highland barley chiffon cake was discussed． The main indexes in-clude moisture content，specific volume，sensory quality，texture，color，and internal stomata shape of cake．The results show that microwave (800 W) pretreatment for 20 s can make the highland barley batter rapidly ex-pand to the maximum volume point，and then after hot air baking for 35 min，the cooked cake will show fine struc-ture，high stomata density and uniform distribution． Compared with the pure hot baking (170 ℃，50 min) and pure microwave curing (800 W，95 s)，microwave pre-expansion process can improve the specific volume，rough feeling and internal viscosity of the cake． In addition，the cake baked with microwave pre-expansion process is better than pure microwave curing cake in appearance，color，texture，mouthfeel，stomata pore distribution u-niformity and the cavity wall uniformity．

Key words: microwave pre-expansion, hot air baking, highland barley chiffon cake, quality, pore distribution, fractal feature