Ombre would describe this cake. (adjective). The definitionof ombre is the French word for color that is shaded or graduated in tone. An example of ombre is the color of a dress that is light gray at the top, medium gray in the middle and dark gray at the bottom. Source Wikipedia
Well , here I had gradations of pink. Unfortunately the humidity played spoilsport here. I have been dying to pipe roses and tulips from the Russian nozzles in whipped cream for months now. So totally wanted to avoid buttercream all over again. But despite whipping the living daylights out of non dairy cream , all I got were limp petals and no stamens. So rosettes it had to be.
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And without fail my fingers reach for the red food colouring. I swear ,I was thinking purple this time. But I guess it had to be red. So I used gel colors, but along with tinting the cream, that also made it loose. So the Russian nozzles will be done with buttercream again. Atleast till the 94%humidity passes.
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The cake is one of my favorites, a low calorie chiffon cake. But I went and unbalanced the calorie equation with all that cream.I've done a whole lot of chiffon cakes before, but never an ombre. Since it involves adding colour,you need to be careful as you may deflate the air out off the whipped egg whites.So a light and firm hand is what is needed. The same as parenting.
This is three egg chiffon cake. Will suffice for about 6 portions.The mango curd can be bottled and refrigerated. So I have three desserts coming up with the same bottle of mango curd. So I'm adding the recipe of the mango curd and will also be giving this its own post.
But before you begin make your cake flour. In a jar place three cups of all purpose flour. Remove 6 tbsp of the flour and replace with 6 tbsp cornflour. Cornflour is pure starch. I use Brown and Polson. Thats the cornflour you need. Mix the flours well. Thats your CAKE FLOUR. Less protien as compared with regular flour for a better sponge.
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For the
Ombre Chiffon Cake and Mango Curd Cream
you need
3 eggs separated3/4 cup caster sugar 2/3 cups cake flour1/2 tsp cream of tartare1/2 tsp baking powder1/8 cup or 2 tbsp neutral vegetable oil I used canola3 tbsp waterGel food color of your choice
The first thing you do is turn on your oven to 190C. Cut out circles of paper for the base of your cake tins. NO GREASE at all. Thats what I love about this. Just paper. The tin must be absolutely grease free because the cake batter needs the cake tin to cling to.
Start witg the egg yolks in a large bowl. Add the water and oil and 1/2 cup of sugar in. Whisk together to mix up , not areate. Add in the baking powder and caje flour and mix up.
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For the mango curd set aside one cup pf strained mango puree. Whisk in 3-4 tsp or enough sugar to taste. Add juice of 3 lemons. Now whisk in 4 egg yolks and cook this till the curd thickens like a custard. Take off the heat and whisk in 100 gms of butter that has been cut into cubes. Since I use Amul butter, I dont need Salt. You can add a pinch.Cool and bottle.For the filling I used equal quantities of mango curd and whipped cream mixed and piped between layers.Generous.A detailed blog post follows.
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I will post a detailed set of instructions specific to Indian summers and monsoons. We also cannot use shortening in buttercream , as that has a clammy mouthfeel. So a few tips will follow.I started with the top, and tinted the cream as I used it up.
Confessions... this was made for a pretty young lady and was to have been frosted with whipped cream roses from Russian nozzles... but they never held. So the rosettes happened. And then I was told that she was so unwell that she was in ICU overnight.
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I can promise you that.
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I won't make you wait long.
Cross my heart.
Go try the chiffon cake in the mean while... its worth the miniscule number of calories.
You will need some practice before you do ombre. Check these out here and here.
So what are you baking today???