Lemon Curd Chiffon Cake – The Frozen Forest Of Shadows

I wanted to do a Frozen-themed cake for the boy’s birthday this year. He is so into this animation that, for a period of time, he kept singing the songs non-stop. I guess he’s just like any other kids who got frozen in time by this very successful Disney production.

My first attempt at the cake was a 50% success – the cake was spongy and fluffy – great; the frost turned out slightly too yellowish and watery, so it didn’t spread onto the cake very well, especially at its sides. This was because I continued whisking the cream after adding in the marscapone, which I shouldn’t have because then it became overwhipped. I have also ambitioned to do this snow mountain so that I could place the Frozen figurines onto it, sort of like the first episode where Elsa hid in the ice castle and the rest were trying to reach her. My ice mountains failed horribly as well – burnt meringue that tasted not bad, but looked… well. I’ll just stop here. You can look at the picture right below if you’re curious enough.

So there and then, I know what went wrong, and so for my second and actual attempt (the day before his celebration), I did what I could to maintain the cake’s integrity. The cake turned out great, as per the first attempt. The frost turned out fantastic (!) – I stopped whisking after the first round of whipping the cream, and then manually combined the marscapone and lemon curd by hand which worked great. And instead of a snow mountain, I decided to go for the forest of shadows because I could easily do this with chocolate shavings and some decorations. Of course, it didn’t turn out looking like a very scary forest, but at least it looked like a very decent cake (my nephew actually thought I bought it off the shelf) with some very unconvincing and awkward ensemble of Frozen figurines on top of it.

Works well. Lemon taste went through. Boy loved the figurines more than the cake but he’s happy, and that’s what matters most 🙂

Ingredients (Chiffon Cake):

Plain flour: 2 1/4 cups, sifted
Caster sugar: 1 cup + 1/4 cup
Salt: 1 tsp
Baking powder: 1 tbsp, sifted
Egg yolk: 5, large
Lemon zest: 1 tsp
Olive oil: 1/2 cup
Cold water: 3/4 cup
Vanilla extract: 1 tsp
Egg white: 8, large

Method (Chiffon Cake):

Preheat oven at 160 degrees Celsius. Grease 2 9″ circular baking trays.
Combine plain flour, 1 cup sugar, salt and baking powder in mixing bowl.
Separately whisk together egg yolks, lemon zest, olive oil, cold water and 1 tsp vanilla extract till smooth and pale in colour.
Stir egg mixture into flour mixture till evenly combined.
Whisk together egg whites till soft peaks form. Add in 1/4 cup sugar and whisk till stiff and glossy.
Scoop out 1 large tbsp of egg white and stir into batter. Fold remaining egg white into batter till well incorporated.
Pour into baking pans. Knock pans on counter to even out the batter.
Bake 45min for each pan till golden brown. Remove and cool 30min before removing from pans.
Slice away edges of cake to form a square. Set aside for assembly with the frost.

Ingredients (Lemon Frost):

Heavy whipping cream: 1 cup
Caster sugar: 1/4 cup
Vanilla pod: 1
Soft Italian marscapone: 1 cup
Lemon curd: 1/2 cup
Chocolate shavings: 100g

Method (Lemon Frost):

Whisk together heavy cream and sugar till soft peaks form.
Stir in seeds from 1 vanilla pod, marscapone cheese and lemon curd. Lightly stir or whisk together by hand still thick and spreadable.
Spread evenly on top of bottom layer of square cake with palette knife.
Place 2nd slice of cake on top. Spread evenly on top of cake and all around.
Garnish with chocolate shavings to your liking. You can either garnish the entire cake, or leave the top as it is with only the frosting.

Disclaimers:

This recipe was kindly adapted from Grits and Chopsticks’ Raspberry and Lemon Curd Chiffon Cake.
I have removed raspberries from the recipe to make it a slightly less complicated recipe, and then added chocolate shavings to make it look more like a forest.
I used the cut-outs from the edges of the original circular cakes to place on top of the 2nd slice of cake to create a slightly more 3D looking forest (imagine hills).