Snowman Tiered Vanilla Chiffon Cake and Christmas Cupcakes

This is my first big tiered chiffon cake and catering to a big group together with chiffon cupcakes (for about 70). It is Christmas-themed, for my lovely mummy friend’s boy’s first birthday and house warming. The chiffon cupcakes are all fondant-free and chiffon cake-based and so are less sweet and softer.

Snowman Tiered Cake
I fell in love with the idea of a snowman cake proposed by her and took to experiment with the first tiered chiffon cake. The tiered snowman is made up of two vanilla chiffon cakes, a 7-inch on a 9-inch with a 3-inch hat on top. I have provided the recipe for the 9-inch vanilla chiffon cake below. I have found that temperature control towards the end is important to prevent browning of the cake. For the 7-inch chiffon cake, just half the recipe and reduce the baking time by 16 min at the end.

Vanilla chiffon cake (9-inch chiffon tin)
2 egg yolks
40g sugar
78g corn/vegetable oil

82 ml water
10 ml vanilla extract
120g cake flour
Few drops of white coloring (optional)

Meringue:
8 egg whites
90g 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 150°C for 15 mins and 140°C for 15 min, then 130oC for 16 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 snowman hat was made from charcoal chiffon cake baked in a 3-inch cupcake liner and 6-inch circular tray with removable base (2 egg recipe). The rest of the charcoal batter can be poured into a square 6-inch tray lined with baking paper for cutting out the snowman eyes and buttons. The cute snowman 'carrot' nose is also chiffon cake! It is made from orange chiffon cake baked in a paper cone (1 egg recipe makes 4 cones). To unmould the cupcake and paper cones, just gently peel off the paper, leaving the chiffon cake intact. The nose and hat and other facial features were then attached onto the cake using a brush of melted marshmallows. The two arms are made from black meringue (leftover from baking) coated onto satay sticks and baked for 12 min at 150°C.

Tada! My happy snowman!

Christmas Chiffon Cupcakes

The chiffon-based cupcakes were quite a lot of work. The top circle covering each cupcake and the designs were cut out from chiffon cakes baked in layer trays. Though theoretically only three 9-inch layer cakes are required to cover 27 cupcakes, I found that I needed four at least as there is often wastage such as parts with wrinkled lines from the baking paper which I reject. I used an extra red strawberry layer cake to cut out the letters. So in total I used five layer cakes (I don’t have enough trays so I used a mixture of 9- and 10-inch). Each layer chiffon cake is a 2 egg recipe vanilla chiffon (white or plain colour), pandan chiffon (green using pandan paste) and strawberry chiffon (red using strawberry paste). Keep everything clingwrapped and airtight until use.

For the base, the 27 cupcakes were filled with vanilla chiffon cake using a 5 egg recipe.

Vanilla chiffon cake (27-28 cupcakes)
5 egg yolks
33g sugar
65g corn/vegetable oil
62 ml water
8 ml vanilla extract
100g cake flour

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

1. Preheat oven to 150°C. Prepare the empty cupcake liners on big tray.
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. Scoop in the chiffon cake batter into the cupcake liners (to 1 cm from the top). Gently tap the cups to remove bubbles.
7. Bake the cupcakes cake for 17-20 min at 150°C.
8. Allow to cool on a cooling rack.
9. Cut out circles (slightly bigger than each cupcake) from the layer chiffon cakes and attach it to the cupcake with a brush of melted marshmallows.

10. Cut out the designs (using a Christmas tree cutter or snowflake cutter) and decorate on the circle chiffon cake using a brush of melted marshmallows. Be sure to brush with a bit of syrup on top to prevent the small cake pieces from drying up.

Phew! Finally packed! And this is only 1/3 of the cupcakes.

Thank God my friend shared everyone loved the cake and the creativity =)

Happy first birthday to Xack and blessed Christmas!

I am submitting this to "My Treasured Recipes #4 - Ho Ho Ho It's Christmas (Dec 2014)" hosted by Miss B of Everybody Eats Well in Flanders and co-hosted by Charmaine of Mimi Bakery House.

With lots of love,
Susanne