Piggy and Elephant Strawberry Ogura Cupcakes

My animal ogura cupcakes are having a silly conversation! :p Aren't  they kawaii? ^_^ I made them for a dear friend's son who loves cute animals. His favourite was elephant so here is my attempt though I'm not too good with it. She liked pink so strawberry flavour was the natural choice (natural food colouring :)).

The recipe was adapted from both my Froggy Pandan Ogura Cakes and Hundred Eighty Degrees strawberry ogura as I didn't have strawberry powder.

Ingredients (makes three 9cm diameter glass bowls and one 6" square tray)

3 egg yolk + 1/2 egg

32.5g corn oil

30ml fresh milk

10ml puree

¼ tsp strawberry paste

32.5g cake flour

1/4 tsp salt

3 egg whites

37.5g sugar

1/5 tsp cream of tartar

Method

1. Preheat oven to 150^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, whole egg, corn oil, milk, puree, strawberry essence and salt until well combined.

3. Sift in flour and stir till smooth batter formed.

4. Aliquot out 4 tsp of batter for patterning and divide batter into 2. Add charcoal powder till desired colour and a tiny dip of wilton pink coloring for the pink batter. Add 1/3 tsp cake flour to the batter and 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 meringue over into patterning batter (2 tbsp per 1 tsp batter) and fold gently.

6. Fold in the rest of the meringue into the rest of the batter gently in 2 additions.

7. Pipe the black and pink batter onto the bowls and bake for 1.5 min.

*Steps 5-7 must work very quickly. If take long to pipe, then best to make meringue with 1 egg white first specially for piping. After that then make meringue for the main cake batter.

8. Pour the cake batter into the glass bowls till 2/3 full and the rest into the square tray. Bang the bowls/tray on the counter top 3 times each side to get rid of big air bubbles.

9. Steam bake at 150^oC for 40 min or when skewer comes out clean.

10. Remove from oven and invert immediately on cooling rack.

11. Unmould gently with hand and peel off baking sheet when the cakes have cooled completely.

12. The nose and ears were carved out using a combination of cookie cutters and knife carving. I used my hearts cutter to cut out a “J” for the elephant’s nose. The picture tutorial for the piggy nose and ears are found in my post on Pig pig rockmelon chiffon. “Glue” the parts onto the animal cupcakes using melted white chocolate with marshmallows.

My friend shared photos of how her boy loved the cupcakes which really made my day! ^_^ 

With lots of love,

Susanne