Baking Addiction 5: Rainbow Pancake with Natural Coloring

I've been baking for only less than a year, there is no shame in admitting that my skill are pretty much amateurish, like I still couldn't figure out why certain recipes calls for 1/2 tsp of sodium bicarbonate, and other requires 3/4 tsp; Sometimes my cakes/ cookies are cloyingly sweet although I follow the recipe exactly (my baking sifu, Hannah said that I should always half the amount of sugar in the recipes by the Westerners, apparently Caucasian have sweet tooth). I've tried many recipes but I can never predict what will eventually come out from the oven, some turns out to be great, some was thrown into rubbish bin the moment it was out because it was way below my modest quality standard.

Well, I can pretty much sum it up by saying my baking experience for past 1 year was nothing but a trial and error process. If I bake a lousy one, I'll bake again until i get it right. It's sure not a cheap hobby but hopefully I will get better and better. This post describes the toughest ever challenge in my entire (relatively short) baking history - a birthday cake for my 1 year old nephew. I mean who wants to screw up a 1 year old's birthday by baking an ugly or yucky birthday cake right. So the pressure is tremendous. So much so that i fell sick after having the 1st bake trial last Saturday. 

Initially, my sister requested for a cake which used mostly healthy and organic ingredients.  And below is the recipe which she painstakingly went and scanned from a baby cookbook and email to me.

Oh boy it was a damn challenging recipe, I never use half of the ingredients stated in the recipe for any baking before- rapeseed oil, wheat germ, apple juice concentrate.... And after 1 week of futile search (at countless baking stores and supermarket) for all the ingredients, I finally give up and suggested another cake recipe to my sister. 

Picture taken from wendyinkk@blogspot.com

I present to you the beautiful Rainbow Pancake by table for two. The 'cake' has many colorful layers which is not just a pleasant sight to see, but all the coloring are from natural food source so its healthy to eat as well. The only downside is that its a pancake recipe which utilize buttermilk (again, its something which I never use in my baking before), and heck this is my first time making a pancake! The reason why pancake is preferred is due to the fact that it requires less amount of time for baking (imagine baking 7 layer of cakes, one by once), and high heat during baking will dis colorize the natural coloring. The original recipe calls for 7 layers since I cant find the blackberries (and also because I'm lazy), so I have omitted 2 layers. I've also changed the whipped cream to cream cheese.

So here comes the recipe: 

Natural Rainbow Pancake Cake (Recipe source: Wendyinkk)

Makes a large 10 inch wide, 5 inch tall cake. Easily feeds 20.

Each layer

1 grade B egg

1 Tbsp oil

50gm buttermilk

50gm cake flour

20gm sugar

¾ tsp baking powder

1/8 tsp baking soda

Pigment sources + additions

Red layer = 50gm beetroot , raw

Yellow layer=50gm carrots, raw

Orange layer = 40gm carrots + 10gm beetroot , raw,

Green=40gm pandan juice + ¼ tsp baking power –baking soda

Purple = 20 blueberries(microwaved for 10 secs) + 2 Tbsp water+ ¼ tsp baking power -baking soda

For all layers, do them separately

1. Prepare the wet ingredients. Put oil, buttermilk and pigment sources together and blend ( I used

an immersion blender). Mix with egg.

2. Mix dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking soda and baking powder) together in a bowl.

3. Pour wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Combine until a batter is formed, do not overmix.

4. Cook on frying pan on low heat (covered with lid) until surface is cooked

5. Flip over onto cooling rack to cool off.

6. Stack pancakes, separated with non stick baking paper. Keep chilled until time of use. 

Cream cheese frosting

One 8-ounce (227 grams) cream cheese, at room temperature
1/4 cup (50 grams) granulated white sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup (240 ml) heavy whipping cream(contains 36-40% butterfat)

1. In the bowl of electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, beat the cream cheese until smooth. 

2. Add the sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and beat in the vanilla extract. 

3. In a clean bowl, beat the whipping cream until soft peaks form. Gradually fold or beat the whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture.

Assembly

Spread cream and stack the layers according to sequence. Spread cream over pancake and chill for another 5 hours before serving.

Although there is alot of work but it was kinda fun to make all the different color of pancakes layers. The colors were vibrant (especially the beetroot and blueberries) and the pancakes smells great when it was slowly cooking on the pan. However, it wasn't as beautiful as I would have expected. First of all, the pandan extract which I prepared for the green layers came out as dull faint green, guess I should prepared it at least a night before so that it would be concentrated. The cream cheese was quite runny, its highly advice to add gelatin. But the killer was the pancake itself, imagine the usual McD breakfast's pancakes, but times 5 layers, its very thick and carbo-ish, I felt so full even after just 1 slice, so i guess its not so suitable for baby. The pancake itself doesn't have much taste compare to cake, most of the flavors actually came from the cream cheese. 

So I end up with big pancakes good for 20 people to eat but no idea what to bake for my nephew birthday. fret not, I will reveal what I finally bake for my nephew in my next post, stay tune.