Gula Melaka Pandan Kaya Painted Swiss Roll (new technique!)

 I am really excited to share a new game-changing technique that will make painted cakes much easier for beginners without much artistic or baking skills! This is a bake to test the proof of concept and I am very pleased with the results!

Some of you may recognise the style of artwork is Nagomi art. Why the choice of nagomi art style? It's because my mum took up a nagomi art class recently and I was inspired to turn one of her paintings into her birthday cake design. This tulip design is taken off the internet (FortuneArtDream from Pinterest) for my practice run. The choice of cake flavour is because Mum took up a Peranakan cooking course last year and has been practicing making kueh kosui on and off. I thought this flavour profile is reminiscent of the kueh.

Cake composition:

- Pandan gula melaka chiffon sponge cakes for the tulip centers and white sponge canvas for the painting

- Gula melaka pandan kaya pudding in green and brown colours as the roll cake filling

If you have followed me long enough and are familiar with patterned chiffon cakes and swiss rolls, you will know that the standard method is to use a patterning batter that is baked together with the base sponge batter as the cake designs or as guides to mark out areas where additional details are painted in post-baking. Working with patterned batter can result in many challenges where things can go wrong, such as:

1. Cracks along boundaries between pattern and base sponge

2. Pattern stuck to Teflon sheet/parchment paper instead of base sponge

3. Patterning batter turning runny/deflating before piping finish the pattern

4. Difficulty in optimizing oven settings to bake the cake

What I have done in this new technique is to do away with the patterning batter and we start with a blank canvas in the form of a solid coloured sponge (usually white). Baking a single-coloured sheet cake is way easier and faster!

How do we get the pattern on then? By tracing a mirror imaged picture onto parchment paper and printing it onto the cake! I was inspired to try this when I saw reels shared by qeleg_cake (Instagram account) on printing faint outlines onto sponge cake before painting. What I did differently was to use edible marker instead of cake paint, and parchment paper instead of transfer paper.

Here's some pictures of the painted cake halfway through and upon completion.

You may refer to the reel below for the recipe of the cake (see the captions and pinned comments of the reel) and printing technique. Do note that although I made this cake using prebiotic fibres, a sugar replacement and gula melaka, the recipe I shared only uses regular white sugar and gula melaka as the sugar-free version with prebiotics is class material.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DJRIsoGpLPN/?igsh=MWxkMWRoa3o3dWo4Ng==

with love,

Phay Shing