Kawaii Neko Landscape-Camou Chiffon Cake (Matcha, Charcoal, Cocoa, Vanilla)

This is one of my favourite creations because I love Japanese art and all things kawaii!!

The base cake is a Camouflage marble design, made from natural colouring using Matcha (light green), Bamboo Charcoal (grey), Cocoa (brown) and Vanilla, inspired by the Japanese landscape art my friend sent me. The colour scheme and ingredients chosen are also very Japanese. I had long stripes of brown and grey running down diagonally across the base, inspired by the planks and river in the landscape. And these are filled with green and cream colour from the greenery and house. This is also one of my bigger cakes, being baked in a 10-inch (or 25-cm) chiffon tube pan and uses a 10-egg recipe for a tall cake.

I also made some cute features from chiffon cake requested from my friend, a dish of sashimi, a ball and cute cushions for the cats to play with!

Landscape-Camou Chiffon Cake (Matcha, Charcoal, Cocoa and Vanilla) (10-inch chiffon tin)
10 egg yolks
67g castor sugar
132g vegetable/corn oil
127g water
200g cake flour
18g vanilla extract
Matcha paste (2 tsp matcha powder in 10g hot water)
Charcoal paste (1/4 tsp charcoal powder in 10g hot water)
Cocoa paste (1 tsp alkalized cocoa powder in 10g hot water)
*Making the paste helps prevent the chiffon cake from have uneven specks of the powder.

13 egg whites
150g castor sugar
1/2 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 and for ogura-like texture.

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. To three of the portions, add matcha paste, charcoal paste and cocoa paste respectively. To the remaining portion, add 10 g hot water.

5. Meringue: Beat the egg whites with cream of tartar till foamy. Add in ½ castor sugar for meringue and beat till soft peaks form. Add in the remaining castor sugar and beat till firm peaks form (or just to the point of stiff peak). This helps for finer and softer texture.

6. Divide the meringue into 4. Gently but quickly fold in the meringue into the 4 colours batter in 2 additions. You need to work fast for the meringue not to deflate.

7. Alternate the spooning of different coloured batter randomly into the tin (I tried to make the blobs longish by spooning diagonally across the base). Repeat the alternate spooning of coloured batter till 2-cm from the rim. Gently tap the tin on the counter top 3x to remove air bubbles.

8. Bake the chiffon cake at 160°for 15 min then at 150°C for 10 min, then at 140°C for 30 min, then at 130° for 15 min, or until skewer inserted into centre of cake comes out clean.

9. Invert the chiffon cake once removed from oven to cool completely on a wire rack.

10. Unmould the chiffon cake by hand (watch Video tutorial 'Hand Unmoulding Chiffon Cakes for a Clean Finishing').

My Japanese Landscape/flavours-inspired Camouflage Chiffon Cake! Freshly unmoulded =). It smelled really good out of the oven!

For the cute neko (or cats), I baked a reduced egg yolk vanilla chiffon in 5-cm silicone cake pop moulds (silkomart) for the white cat, and a normal vanilla-chocolate chiffon for the cream/brown-coloured cat. The body of the white cat was just nice to cover the tube hole in which I hid a hidden surprise! I cut the ears and limbs from layer chiffon cake and cake pops and affixed them onto the cake using melted marshmallows.

Thankful it was well-received, just today! =)

With lots of love,
Susanne

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