Pink and Blue Owls on 'Tree Cluster' Pandan-Vanilla (Cocoa) Chiffon Cake

It’s been really busy with the book event that just passed and chiffon marathon for photoshoots for the 2nd chiffon book in the pipeline. As I shared, I’m really so thankful and humbled for the opportunity, and super excited working on it! I actually made this pair of sweet Boy girl Owls Chiffon Cake for my friend’s lovely twins a while back but only got to posting it now.

I made the owls from piping the ‘V’ on glass oval bowls, and then baking a blue and pink chiffon cake in it. There’s a picture of the bowls with piped features and cake baked over in the link here. Here’s the recipe I used:

Vanilla Chiffon Cake (blue/pink owls)
2 egg yolks
20 g castor sugar
13 g vegetable/corn oil
28 g water
3 g vanilla extract
40 g cake flour, sifted
Pink and blue gel food colouring

Meringue
3 egg whites
¼ tsp cream of tartar
30 g castor sugar

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 160^oC. Prepare a tray of water at the bottom of the oven (I used the lowest rack to bake the cake).

2. Whisk egg yolks with sugar till fluffy. Add in oil, water, vanilla extract and whisk until well-combined.

3. Sift in flour and stir till smooth batter formed. Ensure they are no lumps.

4. Spoon out 1 tsp for patterning batter Divide the remaining batter into two. To each portion, add a dip of wilton blue and pink gel food colouring respectively. Mix well.

5. Beat egg whites and cream of tartar until foamy using an electric whisk. Add in sugar in 2 additions and beat until firm peaks are formed (or just reach stiff peaks). The peak formed doesn't flop over but it's not overly stiff either. Scoop over 2 tbsp meringue over into patterning batter and fold gently.

6. Transfer the plain batter into a piping bag and cut a 2-mm hole. Pipe five ‘V’s on the glass bowl for owl feathers pattern for each bowl. Bake at 160oC for 2 min. After that, allow the bowls to cool.

7. Divide the rest of the meringue into the two and gently fold the meringue into the blue and pink batters respectively in 2 additions. *You can do this while baking the patterns in the oven.

8. Pour the blue and pink cake batter into each glass bowl till 2/3 full. Bang the bowls on the counter top to get rid of big air bubbles.
9. Steam bake at 160^oC for 10 min then 150^oC for 25 min or until skewer comes out clean.

10. Remove from oven and invert immediately on cooling rack, similar to picture in the link above.

11. After bowls have cooled completely, gently pull cake from sides of the bowl and unmould by hand.

Using knife, cut off a rectangle at the centre of the tip of the cake to make the shape of the ears. The other details on the owls e.g eyes and wings were cut from sheet cakes (same chiffon cake recipe coloured brown, black, blue and pink, baked in baking pans-lined with baking paper), and glued on with melted marshmallows.

For the base chiffon cake, I used a 3 egg yolk, 4 whites pandan chiffon cake recipe for the base, and a 1 egg yolk, 4 whites ‘reduced egg yolk’ vanilla chiffon recipe at the top for the 9-inch (23-cm) tube pan. I deposited the pandan batter to make mounds, before spooning in vanilla batter. Such ‘frilly’ designs will be covered in detail in the 2nd chiffon book, Deco Chiffon Cakes. Here, I also portioned out 5 tsp from the vanilla batter and added in 1 tsp cocoa powder (for the tree trunks), and these were made by spooning in the cocoa batter alternately with vanilla batter. Look out for more updates on the work-in-progress on Deco Chiffon Cakes.. am really excited about it!

Thankful cake was well-received by the lovely twins and their equally lovely mummy!

With lots of love,
Susanne

Oh yes, there are some photos from the recent Creative Chiffon book events here. It was really fun and encouraging! Big big thank you to everyone's support!! Should be the last of the last event already!