Pandan Chiffon Cake

Pandan Chiffon Cake... ahh. One of my favourite things to eat when my mom buys one back from pasar malam/local bakery. If you haven't tried Pandan Chiffon Cake, you're missing out big time.

So for the past month I have been researching about this cake. I was looking at countless recipes, hoping to find one that is foolproof and delicious because baking is not cheap, I don't want to be wasting my ingredients on a cake that sucks. Then I found this Youtube video:

 

 

The end result looked promising so I went to her blog and decided to use her recipe. Her Pandan Chiffon Cake post doesn't only contain the recipe, she included lots of info you need to know in order to bake a good Pandan Chiffon Cake too. How can anyone not love bloggers like that? 

Since she got the recipe from another blogger, I went to the other blogger's post. Once again, the blog post contains a massive amount of info you cannot do without if you want to bake a good Pandan Chiffon Cake. This is why you don't need recipe books or go for cooking classes these days.

I highly recommend reading their posts if you're serious about making not just a Pandan Chiffon Cake, but a GOOD Pandan Chiffon Cake. I cannot give them enough of credits for putting so much of info in their blog posts for just a cake. All credits go to the both of them; kitchen tigress and i eat. i shoot. i post. I used the latter's recipe (the blogger's a doctor by the way, I've never thought that doctors can bake! :P) because my chiffon tin was a large one so it's just easier to use his. Kitchen tigress adapted his recipe to fit a 21 inch chiffon tin, which is a lot smaller.

First of all before everything, you need to think about the pandan flavour. There are 2 options: natural or artificial. For artificial flavourings, there's pandan essence (usually colourless) and pandan paste (a deep green). Nothing wrong with using artificial flavourings, in fact it gives a stronger pandan flavour, and richer green if you use the paste. I chose the natural version which is of course using real pandan leaves but the green turned out really faint. The flavour's there but definitely not strong, but I still liked it. Real pandan leaves are mildly fragrant anyway. It's all about that rewarding feeling when you know you've made it from scratch.

If you choose to use artifical flavourings, you can skip the next part of this post and go strainght to the recipe.

In Melbourne, you can find pandan leaves in Little Saigon Market in Footscray. There's only 1 shop which sells it though, the one nearest to Sun Wong Kee restaurant. I got mine for $2.50/bunch of about 15 leaves. 

Then of course you need to extract the 'juice' from those fragrant leaves. From the Youtube video it shows clearly how to do it. You can blitz it with a blender, food processor or a stick blender. If you don't have either, you can pound it with mortar and pestle but... why would anyone go through such torment? Get a blender! They're really useful in the kitchen. 

It's a really clever idea to blend the leaves WITH coconut milk, because then you're not diluting it but instead you're infusing the coconut milk with the pandan extract. I would highly suggest using this method.

I didn't do that because my pandan leaves which I've kept for days in the fridge was not looking good anymore and I knew I had to do something with it pronto or they will go bad. But I wasn't sure if I was gonna bake anytime soon, if I extracted the leaves with my coconut milk and left it there they might go bad TOGETHER, which is even worse.

So I extracted the leaves the conventional way which is to blitz it with water. I found this technique in Wendy's blog post to obtain a concentrated version of pandan juice. Brilliant!

Basically you blitz it with some water. You'll know how much you need because without water, the blades won't be able to blend properly so add slowly until everything is moving constantly. Once you get a fine paste, squeeze and strain the juice. Leave the juice for a few hours to a day and what happens is the chlorophyll will settle to the bottom, and you'll see 2 layers of the juice. The bottom layer is a deep, forest green while the top layer is a translucent greenish (sometimes brownish) colour. I scooped out the translucent layer as much as I can and only used the bottom layer. The chlorophyll is the component which gives your cake that green tint, the extract itself has that mild pandan fragrance.

Pandan Chiffon Cake

Adapted from: kitchen tigress, i eat. i shoot. i post

Mould: 25/26 cm

A:

Corn Oil 115ml

Coconut Milk 140 ml

Condensed Milk 2 tbsp

Pandan Juice 2 tbsp (Or paste/essence 2 tsp)

Salt 1/4tsp

B:

Cake Flour 200gm

Baking Powder 2tsp

C:
Egg Yolks 6

Castor Sugar 65gm

D:

Egg White 9

Castor Sugar 95gm

Cream of Tartar 1 tsp (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 180°C, or 160-170°C if fan-forced.

2. Mix A together except for salt, strain, then add salt. Set aside.

3. Mix B together, sift, and set aside.

4. Beat C until thick and pale. (It took me 5 minutes)

5. Add A into C and beat till incorporated, then add B and continue beating till incorporated.

6. Beat/whisk egg whites till foamy, add cream of tartar and beat till soft peaks form. Add sugar a little at a time while continuously beating until stiff peaks form.

7. Fold in D into the C mixture in 3 portions.

8. Pour into an unlined and ungreased chiffon tin, smooth out the top and bake for 45-55 minutes, depending on size of mould.

9. When cake is done, invert it and leave it elevated from the surface and leave to cool completely.

10. To remove cake, run a spatula/knife along the sides and base of the tin carefully.

* I started off at 165°C. My cake was cracking like nobody's business, so I turned down the temperature to 160°C.

 

* Instead of baking it at 55 minutes as suggested, I did only 45 and the cake was perfectly cooked. That could probably be due to the larger tin I used, (26cm, recipe uses 25cm) the batter is more spread out.

* Cake/Low protein flour is necessary. I used all purpose flour once for another chiffon cake and the cake was dry and 'cakey', not soft like chiffon.

* I used to ignore the use of cream of tartar, but I won't anymore because it does make a difference.

* I used condensed milk because someone commented that the use of it gives a better texture/taste. Not sure if it does make a difference but I'm really happy with the outcome of this recipe.

* I didn't use vanilla essence. It's a pandan chiffon cake and I like it to smell only like pandan.

This is what you get when you rush to remove the cake from the tin =.= Take your time when running your knife at the base to get that perfect, brown layer.

As you can see, it doesn't have that type of green you see in most chiffon cakes you buy at the bakery. If compared with kitchen tigress's chiffon cake, the colour of her cake is more saturated than mine, considering we both use natural pandan juice. The only explaination I can think of is her pandan leaves are most probably nicer, the freshly plucked from the garden type while mine were old.

But I'm not complaining as I am really happy with the taste. If there's one word to describe this cake, it's soft. It's soft in almost every aspect; colour, flavour, texture. It's different from the pasar malam/asian bakery ones but I still like it. It's soft, pillowy... like eating clouds.