Loving Creations for You: 12 Zodiac Animals 'Yusheng' Chiffon Cake

The 12 Zodiac animals gathering together for a “Lo Hei” reunion before the Dog takes over the Rooster for the year! =)

All the animals are made from small chiffon cake pops and the “yu sheng” was also cut from chiffon cake! It was a lot of work crafting the animals and “yu sheng” but it was a work of love and a joy for me =). Thankful it was well-received!

The animals going for a Merry-go-round here!

**Updated 15/2/18:
Super honored to be featured on the official account on Instagram! Watch their instagram stories on how I made the cake!

The base cake is a 7-inch Lemon Vanilla Chiffon Cake.

I used this recipe:

Lemon Vanilla Chiffon Cake (7-inch chiffon tin)
4 egg yolks
26g sugar
53g corn/vegetable oil
52ml water boiled with lemon zest (1 lemon)
80g cake flour
7ml vanilla extract
Few drops of natural yellow food coloring (Magic colours) *optional

5 egg whites
60g sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar

1. Preheat oven at 160°C. *I used steam baking like ogura cakes but it is optional.

2. Beat egg yolks with sugar with whisk till pale yellow before stirring in oil, boiled water with lemon zest 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 firm peaks, mixing in caster sugar in 2 additions.

5. Fold in the meringue gently into the batter 1/3 at a time.

6. Scoop the chiffon tin and gently tap on table to remove air bubbles.

7. Bake for 160°C 15 min, then 140°C 30 min, or until skewer inserted into centre comes clean.

8. Invert once out of the oven and unmould by hand when cake is cool (see 'hand unmolding chiffon cakes for a smooth finishing' video).

The animals were baked in cake pop molds like these.

I used a 1 egg recipe (recipe above, divided by 4), and divided the egg yolk batter into 7 colours for the different animals (cream, pink, orange, yellow, green, light brown, dark brown). Similarly, divide the meringue into 7 equal portions and fold into egg yolk batter. Bake a different colour in each cake pop mold. For some animals eg horse and snake, I filled the mold with 2 colours. Bake for 12+ min at 160°C.

The rest of the details were cut from leftover batter poured and combined into baking trays lined with baking paper. You can pipe on the eyes using melted chocolate coloured with charcoal powder or cut from charcoal sheet cake using a yakult straw. Stick on the details using some melted marshmallow.

For the Yu Sheng, I baked another 1 egg recipe as sheet cake and divided into 5 colours (for each of the different “ingredient” (cream, pink, orange, green, red) as above. Then I sliced the sheet cakes finely to make the “yu sheng”, again using melted marshmallow to stick them on.

Don't they look happy? =) Wishing everyone ahead a happy and healthy happy lunar year!