'Elsa's Castle' Blue Ombre (Blue Pea Flower) Chiffon Cake

My power flurries through the air into the ground
My soul is spiraling in frozen fractals all around
And one thought crystallizes like an icy blast.
I'm never going back, the past is in the past
Let it go, let it go

This chiffon cake is inspired by the beautiful Frozen castle that was created as Elsa sang “Let it go”. As I shared previously, I love Frozen very very much myself and was hoping to revisit it someday, so I was really happy my friend requested for a Frozen cake for her daughter’s and hubby’s joint birthday. I always dreamt of building the Frozen castle, but I probably wouldn’t have attempted it if not that snowflake cutters were out of stock island-wide (must be the Frozen craze!) and we couldn’t find any Frozen toppers in time. Thus all the “snowflakes” on the cake were hand-cut from vanilla chiffon cake, really time-consuming and not as beautiful as the complex snowflakes from God’s creation. The Frozen castle was cut from layers of blue ombre (blue pea flower) chiffon cake to resemble the ice making up the castle.

Similar to my previous Frozen-inspired blue pea flower chiffon cake, I used blue pea flowers for natural blue food coloring for the blue ombre chiffon cake here. I managed to get hold of more dried flowers from a very kind friend so this time I used 30 over flowers in 25 ml water to make a very deep blue dye. However, I found that the natural blue food dye was still not vibrant enough for the darker layers; I needed to top up at the very last stage after the meringue was added.

Blue Ombre Chiffon Cake using Blue Pea Flowers (17 cm chiffon tin)

Ingredients:
Blue pea flower dye: Infuse 30 dried blue pea flowers in 25 ml hot water for 15-30 min. Stir well, sieve and press out all liquid from the flowers.

5 egg yolks
33g sugar
65g vegetable oil
63ml water
100g cake flour
8 ml vanilla extract

7 egg whites
75g sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar

1. Preheat oven to 160°C.
2. Beat egg yolks with sugar with whisk till pale yellow before stirring in oil, water and vanilla extract.
3. Next add in sieved flour and whisk till no trace of flour found.
4. Divide the batter into 4 (approximately 13 tsp). Add blue pea flower essence + cake flour in dilution roughly as follows: 8 ml + ¾ tsp cake flour, 6 ml + ½ tsp flour, 4 ml + ¼ tsp flour, 2 ml).
5. Meringue: Beat the egg whites with ¼ tsp cream of tartar till stiff peak, mixing in caster sugar in 2 additions.
6. Divide the meringue into 4 and gently fold in the meringue into each batter ½ at a time.
*Optional: The colour may not be very vibrant, I topped up with more blue coloring at this step but be careful not to overfold.
7. Scoop the darkest blue batter into the chiffon tin, gently level the batter. Then repeat with subsequent lighter colours respectively.
8. Gently tap the tin on the counter top to remove air bubbles.
9. Bake the cake for 15 min at 160°C, then 10 min at 150°C and 22 min at 140°C.

10. Invert once removed from oven and leave to cool on a cooling rack.
11. Unmould the chiffon cake by hand. Gently pull the cake from the sides of the tin at each angle and push the removable base up to unmould the sides. To unmould the cake from the base, gently lift up the cake from the base using hands, repeating this at each angle before turning the base over.

 Happy birthday to the little sweetie and daddy! Have a wonderful Frozen one!

With love,

Susanne