Sunday 13 August 2017

'Woodlands animals' Wooden Stump Chiffon Cake


Woodlands 🦊🦉🍁 "Wooden Stump" Chiffon Cake! 🌲 I had lots of fun creating a Wooden Stump this time and various Miniature Animals from chiffon cake!

My friend was worried about her daughter being sad about cutting up her favorite animal hence all mini mini =p.

It's vanilla chocolate flavour and naturally-coloured. It uses a similar recipe to my previous Sushi Wood-style Chiffon Cake, but the wood grains configured in circular fashion like a wooden log. Also I concentrated the chocolate batter at the sides and made cuts on the chiffon cake to mimic a wooden stump exterior.

*NEW* 16/8/17: Uploaded video on my instagram.


Wooden Stump Chiffon Cake (9-inch tube pan) ~ Vanilla chocolate chiffon cake
8 egg yolks
53g castor sugar
106g vegetable/corn oil
119g water
13g vanilla extract
160g Prima cake flour, sifted
1 tsp cocoa powder, sifted (alkalized)

11 egg whites
120g castor 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 eggs with sugar with whisk till pale and light before stirring in oil, water and vanilla extract.

3. Next add in sieved flour and whisk till no trace of flour lumps are found.

4. Spoon out 20 tsp and add 1 tsp cocoa powder, mix well.

5. Meringue: Beat the egg whites with ¼ tsp cream of tartar till firm peaks, mixing in caster sugar gradually in a few additions.

6. Spoon out 40 tbsp meringue for cocoa batter, leaving the rest for plain batter. Gently but quickly fold in the meringue into the respective egg yolk batter.

7. Transfer the 3 tsp cocoa batter into a piping bag. Pipe thin "wood grains" onto the base of the pan and a ring around the side of the pan. Spoon the plain batter gently into the spaces between the "wood grains". Cover the "wood grains" in the middle gently with more plain batter. After this, I just spoon cocoa batter at the side of the pan and plain batter in the middle (doesn't need to be neat as long as the sides are covered with cocoa batter).

8. Bake the chiffon cake for 15 min at 160°C and then at 150°C for 10 mins and 140°C for 30-31 min, or until skewer comes out clean. *This is just a guide as each oven’s internal heat is different, do optimize for your own oven.

9. Invert the chiffon cake once removed from oven.

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

11. Made cuts along the sides of the cake using a knife.


The animals are made from baking chiffon batter in small 3-cm cake pops molds and then adding on details like spikes cut from sheet cakes. I've also shared the Mushroom chiffon pop in my 2nd chiffon book Deco Chiffon Cakes. In the book, I also have some small animals from cake pops like mini sheep.



Some of you may know, I'm currently working on a new Basics Techniques book. It will be very different from the first two books; the book format is centered around pictures (more pictures and pictures for every step), to show you more in-depth how to get various shapes and patterns. It also has more in-depth on how to control the oven temperature to prevent browning, sort of textbook-style =). Hopefully this will help more people master the Basics of Deco Chiffon cakes!

Have a blessed week ahead!

With lots of love,
Susanne =)



Updated Book covers (2019):


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