Doraemon Vanilla Chiffon Cake

This Doraemon chiffon cake is for my good friend’s daughter who loves Doraemon. My son also likes Doraemon very much and we almost had it for his birthday last year! Doraemon is a robotic cat who travels back in time in aid a boy Nobita in the cute Japanese manga and anime ^_^.

My friend preferred a pop-out 3-D roundish Doraemon face than a 2D one, so here I used my ball cake mold for baking the pop-out face. The picture is not obvious but I actually baked 1/3 of a ball for the face. I used a 2 egg vanilla chiffon cake recipe for it. Then I cut out the facial features from chiffon cake baked in 6-inch layer trays (3 egg recipe divided into plain batter, charcoal batter, and red yeast powder batter). The eyes, bell and nose were cut out from cakes baked in my cake pop maker for small round cakes.

The details on the bell were made by using a fruit knife to cut 2 lines (but not through). I actually made a real through-hole for the lock (using a straw for the circle and knife) and stuffed black cake into the lock hole to capture the spatial details. I used melted marshmallows to glue the chiffon cake pieces together.

The base cake was a 3 egg recipe vanilla chiffon cake in 17 cm chiffon tin. Recipe for vanilla chiffon cake is below:

Vanilla Chiffon Cake
3 egg yolks
20g sugar
39g vegetable oil
37 ml water
5 ml vanilla extract
60g cake flour

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

1. Preheat oven to 160°C (I used steam baking but it is optional).
2. Beat egg yolks with sugar with whisk till pale yellow before stirring in oil, water and vanilla extract.
3. 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 stiff peak, mixing in caster sugar in 2 additions.
5. Fold in the meringue gently into the batter 1/3 at a time.
6. Pour the batter into the chiffon tin from a height.
7. Gently tap the tin on table 3x to remove air bubbles
8. Bake the cake for 15 min at 160°C then 30-31 min at 140°C.
9. Invert immediately once out of the oven to cool
10. Unmould after the cake is cool.

My friend shared the cake was very nice and her daughter T was delighted!

Happy birthday to Tessa and her daddy!

With love,

Susanne