Chocolate and Vanilla Car Wheel Chiffon Cakepops

Vroom vroom! Car wheel cakepops for a little boy who loves anything on wheels! These are made dairy-free especially for him too!

This is the first time I am making chiffon cakepops for a birthday party so I hope these wheels will create a blazing trail at the party! I had the inspiration to make the cakes like car wheels by looking at my mini donut pans. I have baked chiffon cakes in my mini donut pans before. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
Vanilla chiffon layer cake (6" square pan)
1 egg yolk (65g egg)
4g caster sugar
13g canola oil
17g water
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
20g cake flour
1/8 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
Red, green and blue food colouring (You may use gel, liquid or powder. I used about 1/9 tsp red powder and gel for green and blue because I find that you have to use a lot of red gel to get it really red.)

1 egg white
17g caster sugar
1/10 tsp cream of tartar

Chocolate chiffon mini donuts (makes 24+)
2 egg yolks
8g caster sugar
28g canola oil
35g water
1 tsp vanilla extract
40g cake flour
3/4 tsp charcoal powder
1 tbs cocoa powder
1/8 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder

2 egg whites
34g caster sugar
1/8 tsp cream of tartar

Steps:
1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius. Line the 6x6" pan with baking sheet.
2. Prepare the vanilla batter. Beat egg yolk and sugar with hand whisk until pale and all sugar has dissolved. Add oil and whisk until well combined. Add water and vanilla extract and mix well. Gradually sift in cake flour, salt and baking powder. Mix until no trace of flour can be seen.
3. Divide egg yolk batter into 3 equal portions (or as many or few portions depending on how many colors you want. Maximum 4 due to small pan size). Add food colouring until desired shade is reached.
4. Prepare the meringue for vanilla batter. Beat egg white until foamy with an electric mixer in a clean metal bowl. Add cream of tartar and beat until soft peaks form. Gradually add in sugar until stiff peaks form.
5. Fold in the meringue quickly but gently in three additions into each of the coloured batter.
6. Carefully spoon the batter into the 6" pan to form 3 rectangles lying side by side. Bake for 15-16 minutes. Immediately invert onto cooling rack and remove baking sheet. Cover the cooling cake with another baking sheet. Reduce oven temperature to 150 degrees Celsius.
7. In the mean time, prepare the chocolate egg yolk batter. Beat egg yolks and sugar until pale. Add oil and whisk until well combined. Add water and vanilla extract and mix well. Gradually sift in flour, cocoa powder, charcoal powder, salt and baking powder. Mix well until no trace of flour is seen.
8. Prepare the meringue in a similar way as the vanilla batter and fold in in three additions. Carefully spoon about one heaped tbs of batter into each donut mould.
9. Bake for 15-16 minutes or until skewer comes off clean. I baked at lower temperature due to the black color of the donut pan which heats up fast and tends to brown fast too.
10. Invert immediately using two mugs of the same size as support. I must admit this is a little tricky when doing it with oven mitted hands on searing hot pans. Carefully unmould using a spatula when completely cooled.

Above is a collage of the egg yolk batters, batters with meringue folded in and freshly unmoulded cakes. Don't you think one looks like the flag of a non-existent country and the other looks like a heap of discarded car tyres in a scrapyard :p?

In order to assemble the car wheels, use a small round cookie cutter (about 2cm in diameter) to cut out circles from the layer cake and stuff it into the holes of the donuts. 

Paint the spokes in the middle of the wheel using any edible paint (store bought or homemade like the milk powder paint I used for a few of my bakes) and a fine-tipped brush.

Dry the paint for a few hours or overnight in an air-tight container. Mount the cakepops on sticks and wrap with wrapper and ribbon and you are done :). Alternatively, you may serve these as mini cupcakes by placing them on cupcake liners.

All packed and ready to vroom!

Here's a pic of my trial car wheel bake but with orange chiffon cake as the cake flavour.

Looks more realistic but the boy's mummy preferred something more colorful and fedback that he doesn't like orange flavor. Hopefully these cute wheelpops will bring smiles all around together with Susanne's awesome bus birthday cake (posting in the near future).

*Update: Birthday boy and his sister loved the cakepops so much that they started eating some and mummy decided to let them have it all! This batch is not going to make it to party after all!

With love,
Phay Shing