Rose swirl chiffon cake (玫瑰戚风蛋糕)

With my recently purchased Wilton cake decorating tools, I was looking for a project to get started. When I saw a video of this cake online, I thought this would be a perfect cake for my sister since she loves purple and roses. The rose swirl does not seem too difficult for first timer like me. So I made this cake for my sister's birthday; my sister and the family all love it.

Part 1: Bake two 9" chiffon cakes

Ingredients:

Egg - 10 Large
Cake flour - 170g
Oil - 80g
Milk - 80g
Sugar - 120g for egg white
Sugar - 60g for egg yolk

Material cost: approx. $4.00

Steps:

1. Preheat oven to 340F.
2. Separate eggs into egg yolk and egg whites.

3. In a mixing bowl, beat egg yolk and sugar lightly. Add oil and milk, and then sift in the cake flour, mix well.

4. In a clean mixing bowl, use electrical mixer to beat egg white at high speed to firm peak. Sugar for egg whites are added in 3 batches during the mixing process.

5. Pour 1/3 of egg white mixture into egg yolk batter. Gently fold with a spatula to mix them well. 

6. Pour the egg yolk batter into the egg white bowl in a thin stream. Gently fold the batter into the egg whites. Use a spatula to cut down vertically through the mixture. Move the spatula across the bottom of the bowl; bring it back up the other side, carrying some of the mixture from the bottom over the surface. Repeat this process, rotating the bowl, until the ingredients are combined.

7. Pour the cake batter to two 9" round cake pans. The pan bottom should be greased, or lay some parchment paper so it is easy to remove the cake later.

8. Hold the cake pan and bang the bottom on the table a couple of times to release large air bubbles from the batter.
9. Bake both cake pans in oven for about 45 minutes or until the cake is golden and the top of it springs back when lightly touched.

10. Take out the cake pans, and cool off on cake rake upside down. After the cakes are totally cooled, take them out of the pans.

Part 2: Prepare the icing

The icing is Wilton's buttercream icing recipe, with doubled quantity.

Ingredients:

Crisco solid vegetable shortening - 1 cup
Butter softened - 1 cup

Vanilla extract - 2 tsp
Sifted confectioners' sugar - 8 cups (approximately 2 lb.)
Milk - 4 TBSP

Icing color - Wilton icing color violet

Steps:

1. In large bowl, beat shortening and butter with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in vanilla.
2. Gradually add sugar, one cup at a time, beating well on medium speed. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl often. When all sugar has been mixed in, icing will appear dry.
3. Gradually add milk; beat at medium speed until light and fluffy. It may be necessary to add additional sugar for the correct consistency.
4. Keep bowl covered with a damp cloth until ready to use.

To add color, use toothpick to take some icing color and mix in the icing. Keep add more icing color until you get to the color desired.  I first made the icing into light lavender color and used it for crumb coating. Then I add more icing color to make it into darker violet.

Part 3: Decorate the cake

1. Trim the two 9" cakes to level them. Then crumb coat the cakes.

2. Use Wilton piping bag with 1M tip to make rose swirl from bottom to top. Here is a video of how to do this.