Pig Pig Rockmelon Chiffon Cake

I dream of chiffon cakes pretty often :p In fact many of my creations came from dreams! One night, I dreamt of a pig pig chiffon with a very talented friend who loves pigs (I am a pig lover too)! However, I had to shelve the inspiration because I didn't have any round bowls to bake the chiffon in. When my mum brought over some glass dessert bowls and a friend was coming to visit, I finally had the chance to try out the idea!

I wanted to try rockmelon chiffon as I thought that the taste and colour would go very well with a pig pig chiffon. It was also a fragrant fruit loved by the family. I couldn't find any rockmelon chiffon cake recipes on the web, so I had to improvise. I replaced all the juice in my favourite chiffon recipe with fresh rockmelon puree. Recipe and picture tutorial on how to assemble the pig are detailed below =)

Ingredients (makes three 4” pigs and one 7” layer cake)

3 egg yolks
20g sugar
35g vegetable oil
45ml rockmelon puree
60g cake flour

4 egg whites
45g sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar

Method
1. Preheat oven to 160°C.
2. Beat egg yolks with sugar with whisk till pale yellow before stirring in oil and rockmelon puree (I pureed fresh rockmelon cubes with a blender).
3. Next add in sieved flour and whisk till no trace of flour found.
4. Meringue: Beat the egg whites with ¼ tsp cream of tartar till firm peaks, mixing in caster sugar in 2 additions.
5. Fold the rest of the meringue into the rest of the egg yolk batter in 3 additions using flexible spatula or hand.
6. Pour in the cake batter gently into the bowls and 7” tray. Level the batter in the tray and gently tap tray on table to remove air bubbles.
7. Bake the cakes in bowls for 30 minutes and the 7” tray cake for 15 min.
8. Invert the bowls once they are removed from oven. Unmould when they are cool.
9. After the layer cake cools, flip over the cake onto a clean baking sheet. Use cookie cutters and a butter knife to cut out the tail, nose and ears from the layer cake (see picture below).
- Use the hearts cookie cutter 2x to cut out a curved tail.
- Use the round cookie cutter to cut out the nose (I didn't have a round cookie cutter so I used a round cap instead). Then use a straw to cut out the nostrils.
- Use a butter knife to cut small triangles for the ears.

10. Melt some white compound chocolate in a microwave (30 sec), use a brush to apply it on the underside of the cut-out cakes, then stick the pig features onto the pig cake (see picture below). I used a mixture with melted marshmallows for stronger glue.

I didn't have enough time to assemble the pig cake in time for my friend's visit in the end because I was busy with the baby! Good thing there was a lot of leftover layer cake. I made some cut-out flowers and hearts to put in cupcakes for her =)

The cake was very soft and had a nice "melon-ny" and pleasant taste. But I thought that the rockmelon taste could be stronger so I will increase the proportion of rockmelon puree in the liquid proportion of the cake next time.

With love,

Susanne

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