'Graduation Cap' Bamboo Charcoal Chiffon Cake

This is a loving creation for my dear friend's son's K2 graduation party. It was for such a special occasion so she requested for a cake looking like a graduation hat. As these were for children, only bamboo charcoal was used to color the chiffon cake. Bamboo charcoal is also know for its detoxification and cleansing properties and is a healthy ingredient in addition to being a great natural coloring. It also has very mild or no taste. This is actually my second try on the cake. In order to get the cake to rise like normal with the inclusion of sufficient charcoal powder, I found that I needed to add a bit of baking powder and reduce the cake flour (like cocoa recipes).

The graduation hat was assembled by using a 17 cm charcoal chiffon cake as base, and two 10-inch charcoal chiffon layer cakes to wrap around an 8-inch cake board to form the mortar board on top. I baked an extra orange chiffon layer cake to twirl into strings to make use of the bendy properties of the chiffon cake.

Recipe for the bamboo charcoal chiffon cake for the 17 cm chiffon tin is below. The 10-inch layer cake uses the same recipe but scaled down to 2 egg yolks (i.e. divide everything by 3 times 2). Recipe for orange chiffon cake can be found in my older posts.

Bamboo Charcoal Chiffon Cake (17 cm chiffon tin)
3 egg yolks
20g sugar
39g vegetable/corn oil
39 ml water
5 ml vanilla extract
Bamboo charcoal (~2+ tsp)
56g cake flour
1/4 tsp baking powder

Meringue:
4 egg whites
45g sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar

1. Preheat oven to 160°C (I used steam baking but it is optional).
2. Beat egg yolks with sugar with whisk till pale yellow before stirring in oil, water and vanilla extract.
3. Add in sieved flour and bamboo charcoal and whisk till no trace of flour found.
4. Meringue: Beat the egg whites with ¼ tsp cream of tartar till stiff peak, mixing in caster sugar in 2 additions.
5. Fold in the meringue gently into the batter 1/3 at a time.
6. Pour the batter into the chiffon tin from a height.
7. Gently tap the tin on table 3x to remove air bubbles
8. Bake the cake for 15 min at 160°C then 30-31 min at 140°C.
9. Invert immediately once out of the oven to cool
10. Unmould by hand (video in link) after the cake is cool. 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.

Here's how the freshly unmoulded cake looks like! Love the sexy black that's all natural :)

Here's another look at the Graduation hat chiffon cake :).

Wishing the kids a bright new future in their new schools! I wonder how I will feel next year when my son leaves K2.

With lots of love,
Susanne