Banana Chocolate Giraffe Chiffon Cake

Do you like the giraffe sitting or resting its head? :) My kids liked both!

My kids go bananas over bananas, so it was inevitable that I would try a banana chiffon cake someday! It so happened that the kids asked for a giraffe cake when I had some leftover chocolate cake from my previous day bake. I took the opportunity to use the chocolate chiffon cake to create giraffe patterns using the double-baked method in Turtle Matcha Ogura Cakes, my earlier post. Basically it involves baking patches of chocolate chiffon cake into the banana chiffon cake. The level of difficulty or complexity for this kind of bake is higher than other types of chiffon small cakes e.g. the ice cream pop because it involves baking twice and ensuring there are no air bubbles in the patterns.

If you would like to attempt the banana chocolate giraffe chiffon cake from scratch, you can pre-bake a chocolate chiffon cake using the chocolate chiffon recipe from Vanilla Chocolate Bus Pinata Chiffon Cake but scale it down to 2 egg yolks (divide everything by 3 times 2) and bake the batter in a 15 cm chiffon tin with slightly shorter baking time. After the cake is cool, unmould the cake and proceed to slice it up and cut out random brown patches for the giraffe body patterns, as well as mouth patch (semicircle) and eyes (small circles). Arrange the chocolate cake patches at the base of the glass bowls to be used for baking the banana chiffon cake later.

Following this, bake the banana chiffon cake in the glass bowls using the recipe below. For each giraffe, you will need 2 oval bowls for the head and body. and 2 round bowls for the 4 limbs. I bought the round glass bowls from robinsons (Iwaki, 11 mm OD) and got the oval glass bowls as gifts from my parents. The recipe for the banana chiffon cake is adapted from Christine's recipes. You can also use this recipe to bake a round banana chiffon cake in a 17 cm chiffon tin.

Banana chiffon cake (makes two giraffe cakes or one 17 cm chiffon cake)
3 egg yolks
20g sugar
40g vegetable oil
40 ml milk
80g cake flour
2 ripe bananas
1/8 tsp salt

4 egg whites
40g sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar

1. Mash 2 ripe bananas into puree (top left pic in collage).
2. Preheat oven to 160°C. Prepare the lowest rack for baking the cakes.
3. Beat egg yolks with sugar with whisk till pale yellow before stirring in oil, milk and banana puree.
4. Next add in sieved flour and whisk till no trace of flour is found (top row, middle pic).
5. Meringue: Beat the egg whites with ¼ tsp cream of tartar till stiff peak, mixing in caster sugar in 2 additions.
6. Fold in the meringue gently into batter in 3 additions (top row, right pic).
7. Gently tap the tin on table 3x to remove air bubbles.
8. Bake the cake for 15 min at 160°C then 15 min at 150°C.
9. Cool the cakes on a cooling rack once out of the oven (bottom row, left and middle pics show the cakes cooling on the racks).
10. Unmould after the cakes are cool using hand to gently peel away from the bowls (bottom row, right pic).

After this comes the fun part of preparing the different parts of the giraffes! I used a hearts cutter to cut out the ears from the chocolate chiffon cake. Cut out a heart and slice it into halves (top left pic in collage below). Make some cocoa paste by adding a spoonful of cocoa powder in a teaspoon of water (top right pic) and draw on the giraffe's nose using the cocoa paste with a fine brush (bottom left pic). Lastly, cut out the limbs from the round cakes, first by using a round cutter to cut a donut and then slicing the donut into halves (bottom right pic).

Assembling the giraffe chiffon cakes is somewhat like an engineering problem of making sure the cakes are placed structurally in the correct place :p. I used the limbs to support the body by wrapping around the body (imagine a photo frame with 4 limb supports). I used melted chocolate to fix the cakes in place. Then I used the choco-banana pocky to attach the head to the body, using more melted chocolate to fix them in place. The pocky also serves as the giraffes ossicones or "antennas". Do note that the pocky will become soft after absorbing moisture from the cakes after a while, so do place them right before serving if you don't want the head to slope off. If you are afraid the structure may fall, you can use one quarter of the chiffon tube cake to support from behind but it is not essential. The resting position is much easier in terms of engineering support. I broke the pocky sticks shorter just for the giraffe's ossicones, using just the limbs to support both the body and the head. 

Tada! My sitting and resting giraffes! Aren't they cute? Hee..

Check out the soft, moist, lovely texture of the cake!

My son said it was yummy and he likes the banana chiffon more than the chocolate chiffon cake which was his previous fave! :) This was a fun and happy bake for me and the kids!

I'm linking this post to Bake Along for this week's theme of Chiffon Cakes jointly hosted by Joyce of Kitchen Flavours, Zoe of Bake for Happy Kids and Lena of Frozen Wings.

With love,

Susanne