Princess Castle Chiffon Cake

I finally got to try out my dream castle! This Princess Castle Chiffon Cake is made wholly from chiffon cake from the cones to the towers and all the trimmings! The main cake is made from a 7-inch vanilla chiffon cake surrounded by 5 swissrolls made from vanilla chiffon cake with lemon-infused swiss meringue buttercream (smbc) fillings. These are capped by strawberry chiffon cake cones. In addition the bricks and trimmings are cut out from vanilla chiffon cake baked as layer cakes (thick for bricks and thin for trimmings). I’ve never been a cream person, but this smbc is delicious to me! I’m a convert :). Be prepared for 3 days for this crazy dream cake! :p

Vanilla chiffon cake (7-inch chiffon tin)
1 egg yolk
20g sugar
39g corn/vegetable oil
36 ml water
5 ml vanilla extract
60g cake flour

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

1. Preheat oven to 160°C. Prepare a tray of water at the bottom of the oven (I used the lowest rack to bake the cake). *You may omit steam baking; I like to use it to control my oven temperature rise.
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 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 chiffon cake for 15 min at 160°C and then at 140°C for 32 min.
9. Invert immediately once out of the oven to cool
10. Unmould by hand 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.

The lemon in the smbc balances the butter flavour very well. The 5 swissrolls are cut from 3 10-inch swissrolls.

Lemon swiss meringue buttercream (for 3 10-inch swissrolls, adapted from baking library)
112g sugar
120g egg whites
250g unsalted butter, cubed and slightly softened but still cold
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla extact

Making the buttercream:
Dissolve sugar in egg whites - Place egg whites and sugar in a heatproof bowl sitting over a pan of slightly simmering water without the base of the bowl in contact with the water (double-boiler). Whisk the mixture constantly until the sugar dissolves completely. Rub the egg white mixture with your fingers to check if it is still gritty to test if the sugar has fully dissolved. Egg white mixture should be warm to the touch. Remove bowl from the heat. Do not allow egg whites to scramble/coagulate.

Beating egg whites - Beat egg whites with an electric beater on medium high speed until whites are very stiff and glossy. Egg whites should form stiff upright peaks and will not budge when bowl is overturned. Egg whites should be cool to the touch at this point.

Incorporating butter - Add in butter to beaten egg whites in 3 additions and beat on medium speed. The mixture may become watery as butter is being incorporated. Just continue beating. After the third addition, beat the mixture until it becomes fluffy and firm, like creamed butter.

Flavouring the buttercream - Add lemon juice and vanilla extract to buttercream and beat well to mix.

I did not use a special recipe for the swissrolls but used the same recipe for the vanilla chiffon cake which is very bendy for the swissrolls, scaled to 2 egg yolks. Gently spread the smbc over leaving an inch from the sides.

Roll up again and cling wrap them to set in the refrigerator for a few hours so that it is easier to handle them, as they are still soft even with the smbc.

The cones were baked in paper cups as vanilla chocolate ice cream chiffon cake. Here, I used strawberry chiffon cake recipe to use more natural coloring.

The assembly was the difficult part. I had to insert 3 dowels into the 3 tallest towers to prevent the towers from slanting over, and bring the cakes in and out of the fridge as they are difficult to work with when softened (not easy as the towers are tall!). These were attached to the main castle using more smbc. I had slight difficulty with the left tower which was taller, so had to add a brush of melted marshmallows to reinforce. The cones were attached to the top of the swissrolls also using smbc. The cake needed to be refrigerated for another few hours to set properly before the final adjustments and decorations were added.

Phew! Finally done!

Thank God my friend shared her daughter loved the cake! Made me feel the efforts paid off! =)

With lots of love,

Susanne