I’m very privileged to make this cake for my dear friend Victoria’s baby’s full month celebration. Super happy for her! While making this cake (and such a coincidence as this was Good Friday and Easter week), I was also greatly ministered to and reminded of God’s love for us in giving his only Son Jesus (who died on the cross and rose again) so that we could be reconciled to God.
There was much love in making this cake too. The top tier is a new creation: cloud sky chiffon cake with green pasture! I have shared the recipe for the cloud sky chiffon cake previously. This has added complexity of adding green waves under the cloud-dotted sky. The base tier is a Rainbow chiffon cake, but with 4 colours to fit the 'sunny' colour scheme of the cake. And lastly the 'lamb' figurine on top of a ‘hill’ assembled from small chiffon cake pops.
Cloud-Sky with wavy green pasture
Cloud-Sky with Wavy Green pasture Chiffon Cake (8-inch tube pan)
Egg yolk batter
6 egg yolks
40 g castor sugar
79 g vegetable/corn oil
76 + 5 + 5 g water
10 vanilla extract
120 g Prima cake flour, sifted
1 tsp blue pea flower extract (40 blue pea flowers in 10g hot water)
Blue gel food colouring
½ tsp pandan paste
Meringue
8 egg whites
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
90 g castor sugar
1. Preheat oven to 160°C. Prepare a tray of water under the lowest rack for steambaking. *Optional but helps to increase moisture and control oven temperature for ogura-like texture.
2. Beat egg yolks with sugar with whisk till pale and light before stirring in oil, water, and vanilla extract.
3. Add in sieved flour and whisk till no trace of flour found. Divide the batter ½ (for blue), ¼ (for cloud), ¼ (for green pasture). To the 1/2 portion, add blue pea flower extract and a dip of blue gel food colouring (optional but brightens up the colour). To the first ¼ portion, add 5 g water. To the second ¼ portion, add 5 g water + pandan paste.
4. Meringue: Using an electric mixer, beat the egg whites with ¼ tsp cream of tartar till frothy. Add in half the castor sugar for meringue and whip till soft peaks. Add in all the castor sugar and whip till firm peaks form or just to the point of reaching stiff peak.
*Firm peaks give finer, softer texture, especially with steam baking.
5. Divide the meringue ½ and ¼ and ¼ for each coloured batter. Gently quickly fold in the meringue into respective batter in 3 additions.
6. Spoon the plain batter in cloud-like blobs at the base and sides of the pan, then fill the surrounding spaces with blue pea flower batter. Repeat till the pan is half full. Then deposit mounds of blue batter to make waves (picture tutorial for waves in Creative baking: Chiffon Cakes). Fill the rest of the pan with pandan batter till 2-cm from the brim.
7. Bake the chiffon cake for 15 min at 160°C, then 150°C for 10 min and then 140°C for 25+ min, or until skewer inserted into centre of cake comes out clean.
8. Invert the chiffon cake once removed from oven and allow to cool completely.
9. Unmould the chiffon cake by hand (‘Hand Unmoulding Chiffon Cake for a Clean Finishing’ video tutorial).
4-colour Rainbow Chiffon Cake
I used recipe for my Tri-colour chiffon cake from here. Picture tutorial spooning the batter is found in Creative baking: Chiffon Cakes.
Lamb Chiffon Cake Pop
I baked plain chiffon cake in an egg shell for the body. For the ‘curly’ hair, I used a flower cutter to cut out the shape from chiffon cake from cake pop molds, and assembled together using melted marshmallows. Picture tutorial of sheep chiffon cake pops also found in Deco Chiffon Cakes (2nd chiffon book).
The hill is from baking pandan chiffon cake in a small glass bowl. Other details eg flowers and letters were cut from chiffon sheet cake and pasted on using melted marshmallows.
Thankful everything was well-received! Blessed Easter to all!!
With lots of love,
Susanne
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