Pandan Chiffon Cake

Pandan Chiffon Cake

When I think of Malaysian food so many hawker food come to mind such as Penang Hokkien Mee, Char Koay Teow, Penang Laksa ... the list is very long and they come up in my mind in different order depending on what I crave for at that particular time. But when I think of cakes from Malaysia, the first on the list seems to always be Pandan Chiffon Cake. In fact I grew up thinking chiffon cake originated from Malaysia given its popularity in my hometown Penang. So this is a cake that is not only light and tasty, it brings back a lot of memories.

As chiffon cake requires a tube pan for baking, I have not been able to try baking it till last year when I finally invested in a 25cm chiffon cake tin. Ever since I have made a few different flavours including orange chiffon, strawberry chiffon, chocolate chiffon but the best is still Pandan I must say. And family and friends usually vote for Pandan too. Pandan cake is not very popular in Australia (yet!) and its green colour sometimes bring some funny expressions to my colleagues faces, it has been nicknamed "the green cake", until I have time to explain the green colour comes from the Pandan (screw pine) leaves, and that it is in some way similar to how vanilla extract in used in baking.

This is an adapted version of a recipe from a friend, it uses self raising flour but I generally prefer to use cake flour and add baking powder if I happen to have cake flour handy. I feel cake flour gives the cake a lighter texture.

Pandan Chiffon Cake

Egg yolk mixture
6 egg yolks
1/4 cup of castor sugar
1 cup of coconut milk
1/3 cup of vegetable oils
Pandan paste (about 1/2 teaspoon, I usually just add to get to the level of green I like, just add a bit at a time to be safe the first time you make this)
1 cup of Self Raising flour (if using cake flour, add 1/2 teaspoon baking powder)
pinch of salt

Egg Meringue mixture
8 egg whites
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 cup castor sugar

25cm chiffon cake tube pan

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F (176 C). Place the wire rack on the middle in the oven.
2. In a clean, oil-free bowl, whisk the egg whites till foamy. Add the cream of tartar and whisk until big egg bubbles become small bubbles then add 1/2 cup caster sugar gradually and continue to beat till you get stiff peaks. You will know it is ready when the egg white mixture does not fall when you turn the bowl upside down. Set this aside.
3. In another bowl, cream egg yolks and sugar till the mixture looks pale. Add the oil, coconut milk, Pandan paste, whisk till combined. Add in sifted flour (with baking powder if using cake flour) and pinch of salt, whisk till combined.
4. Fold 1/3 portion of the egg meringue (from step 2) into the egg yolk mixture (from step 3). Do this very gently using a whisk. Then fold in the rest of the meringue, again very gently fold until well-incorporated.
5. Pour the batter slowly into the chiffon cake tube pan, use a chopstick (or skewer) to go round the tin a few times to release any bubbles. Bake at 350 F (176 degrees Celsius) for about 20 minutes. At this point, the cake would have risen. Lower the temperature to 320 F (160 degrees Celsius) and bake for another 30 to 40 min depending on your oven. To test if the cake is cooked, insert with a skewer, if it comes out clean, it is cooked.
6. Remove the cake from the oven and immediately invert the pan and leave the cake to cool in the pan. This will prevent the cake from collapsing.
7. When the cake is cooled (at least one hour), unmould the cake by running a knife or skewer round the edges of the cake (at the sides and in the centre where the ‘tube’ is). Serve the cake and enjoy :)

BTW this is the pandan paste I use which can be found in most chinese grocery store in Melbourne:

Chocolate Chiffon Cake

Combining my two favouite food into one - Chocolates and Chiffon cake.

Orange Chiffon Cake

Orange Chiffon Cake - decorated slightly for friends' birthday, piping skill leaves a lot of room for improvement :)

Strawberry Chiffon Cake

It's official, i am now addicted to Chiffon Cake!

Chiffon Cake seems to be 'out of fashion' these days. The Pandan flavour is the most popular type in Malaysia but having read a Japanese Chiffon Cakwe recipe book last year really opoened my eyes to the variety of Chiffon Cake.

Made this Strawberry flavour Chiffon Cake for the first time. Other than the light and soft texture of Chiffon cake, it carries a very subtle strawberry flavour. Next would be a banana chiffon cake and then maybe orange flavour.








Recipe

A. Egg yolk batter
4 egg yolks
3/4 cup strawberry puree
65g corn oil or olive oil
80g sugar
1 tsp of baking powder
115g cake flour
1/3 tsp salt

B. Egg white mixture
5 egg whites
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
60g sugar

* Optional:
1/2 tsp of strawberry essence
red colouring

Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 345 F. Make sure the rake is in the centre of oven.
2. Combine egg yolks and sugar, beat until well combined (it should look pale yellow)
3. Stir in strawberry puree, oil and strswberry essence (if using)and till well combined.
4. Sift dry ingredients *cake flour, baking powder and salt) into the egg yolk mixture and beat until well combined, add colouring now if desired.
5. In a separate mixing bowl, sprinkle cream of tartar over egg whites and neat till small bubbles form. gradually add sugar and beat until stiff peak forms (to test when it is ready, the egg white meringue would hold and not drop when mixing bowl is turned upside down).
6. scoop 1/3 egg white mixture into egg yolk batter and using a whish, fold into the egg uolk mixture until combined. DO NOT over do it.
7. Put remaining egg white mixture into egg yolk batter and again fold using a whisk until combined but DO NOT overdo as you want to keep the air pockets.
8. Pour into ungreased 20cm tube pan. Give the pan a few bang to get ride of big air bubbles, you can also use a chopstick to swirl the batter.
9. Bake for 30 min, then turn doen heat to approx 320F and bake for another 20 min or until cooked (test with a skewer).
10. Once cooked, removed from oven and IMMEDIATELY invert pan upside down onto heatproof funnel or bottle. Let it cool completely (about 2 hours, depending on weather) before loosening side of cake with knife or long, metal spatula; remove from pan.

Another cake .... but I can't remember what cake it was!

Made this cake some time last year for my MIL and forgot to post the picture now I can't even remember what cake I made! Silly silly Lisa!

Green Tea Pound Cake

This is a cake that I make repeatedly as I like the texture and the not-so-obvious cheese flavour and of course the green tea flavour. The result is always consistent and the method is uncomplicated and ingredients are usually readily in my pantry/fridge.

Apple Cinnamon Cake

The first time I made this cake must be at least 11 years ago. I was still in Uni and living with a few girls who also enjoy cooking when we are not stress over exams, assignments. I didn't even keep the recipe. I stumbled on this recipe again in one of Donna Hay's cookbook recently and thought I will make it again for friends' birthday.

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

This cake was inpired by the Hummigbird Bakery Cookbook my colleagues and friends gave me as part of my work farewell gift. There are many tempting recipes in there but the carrot cake captured my heart. I must thank my friend who organised a guinea pig session for the girls where everyone is to cook/bake something they haven't made/baked before. HM and I teamed up to make this cake together. The cake making process was fun and we did make a few silly mistakes but that's part of the fun and learning. At the end we realised we fogot to put in the vanilla essence but thankfully this is not critical to the success of the cake.

The cake came out really nice, fluffy and fresh. We thought we have grated the carrot too coarsely but it appeared to be just right. The weather was very hot that day and we didn't have enough time to chill the cake long enough otherwise the frosting will look a bit better, it was looking a little tired when we arrived at the friend's house.

Banana Yogurt Cake

I bet almost every passionate baker would have a favourite banana cake recipe up their sleeves. Banana cake seems to be a favourite at most occasions and it is also a good way to make use of the otherwise too ripe to eat bananas. For those banana cake lovers, it is true that what is someone's trash is another's treasures. What I mean is some people would throw away bananas which has blackspots, probably thinking it would be smelly and rotten! But this is the best time to make banana cake as you need over ripe banana to make good banan cakes!

This is not my usual banana cake recipe but I've always wanted to try out one with yogurt. To balance the healthy yogurt, I added chocolate chips ... hmmm now it is a "well-balanced" banana cake ;)

First Chiffon Cake - Green Tea Chiffon Cake with Mango

The clock was ticking away last night and I was struggling to find the motivation to bake a cake for a friend's birthday. The lack of motivation was mainly due to fatigue (well I have been on holiday for more than a week so first day back at work today took a lot out of me haha). Was deciding between buying one or baking one then I thought of trying out chiffon cake. Have been brewing this idea for a long time but I don't have a chiffon baking pan so put this idea on hold for awhile. I finally gathered my enerygy and started weighing the sugar, flour etc and then suddenly I seemed to get more and more alert and the tiredness seemed to gradually go away! Amazing ... maybe this is called cooking therapy?

Initially the plan was to use red bean as the cake filling but at the end I used mango which is in season. I forgot to take a picture of the cross section of the cake, but amazingly it looked really nice - green colour contrasts with the rich yellow mango colour. I am really encouraged to hear some good feedback on my second layered cake, now I can start thinking (or dreaming) of my third ... forth ... etc?

Flourless Hazelnut Chocolate Cake (to die for ......)

Actually thinking back, one of the earliest post on my blog was about a flourless chocolate cake Esther baked for me for my b'day. This time I am baking the same cake for her for her birthday haha! This is a very rich chocolate cake, with hazelnut meal, and I experimented baking with a slower method instead of what the recipe says to make the cake more moist and thus easier to handle. Using the original recipe the cake will crack a little and make it challenging especially when transferring from bake pan to serving plate. Not that there is any problem with the cracking, it's perfectly fine. But since this is for birthday, I wanted to ensure it is presentable.

The recipe baking time is 1 hour but it took mine about 1.5 hours. The method i used is simply baking it in a roasting pan filled with hot water.

This is another timeless recipe, and is taken from Women's Weekly Cookbook.

Mini Cheesecakes (decorated)

Baked some mini cheesecake for a Christmas dinner. I find this mini cheesecake quite time consuming to make especially if you don't want it to be too plain and want to make it a bit special (i.e to decorate). What i did was to make it 3 layers to make it look more pretty.

The first layer is the crushed biscuits to form the base, then the cream cheese and ricotta cheese mixture and for the last layer I used gelatin and also decorated some with chocolate (thanks to the help of Esther). I divided the batter into 3 types - green tea (added matcha powder), passionafruit (added canned passionfruit syrup) and plain. With the passionfruit ones I then added the passionfruit gelatin. As for the rest I decided to put my piping tools to good use and between Esther & I, we came up with all crazy/creative ideas (like the piggy face, the taichi style, the pac man ghost, the $ sign etc - can you spot them in the photo? maybe not all due to my photo angle). It was a lot of fun *_^ Thanks for your help Esther, I wouldn't have had the motivation to decorate it if you were not there helping.

Baked Chocolate Cheese Cake and Passionfruit Rasberry Cake

One of the end of year thanksgiving dinner organised by church group, I was requested to bring cakes. As the dinner is on weeknight, I decided to go conservative and bake something I have experimented before to save time. Work has been very busy lately (surprisingly given we are in the middle of restructuring and awaiting the outcome of my job).

Someone once told me when you do not know what food to bring to a group dinner because you do not know the preference of people well, always bring something you love to eat. Chances are if you like it, someone else would like it too. And if luck is against you and no one likes it, at least you like it and can enjoy it. I reckon this is good advice, and I'm sticking to it LOL.

So here are my two favourite cakes - Baked Chocolate Cheese Cake and Passionfruit Rasberry Cake.

My fisrt layered cake - Layered Green Tea Pound Cake with Red Bean Filling

Layered Green Tea Pound Cake (with Red Bean Filling)

I have been day dreaming about making a layered cake but being a queen of procrastination, i have deferred this idea long enough. As we are celebrating 3 birthdays in the care group this week (Daniel, Eric & Sarah), I was determined that I should put my dream into action and bake the cake for them. I used a combination of 2 different recipes - green tea pound cake (one of my favourite cake at all time) and a recipe I read some time ago for the red bean filling (can't even find the blog anymore as i forgot to bookmark it!).

















The challenge lies in the layering and making the cream as I have never done that before. I baked the cake a bit too long, the top part was cracked
(even though the cream will hide this eventually it presented some risk when I cut the cake into halves sideway).

I cheated a bit as the cream I made was beaten for too long and the texture didn't turn out as anticipated. It was not smooth, but more coarse, when applied on the cake it doesn't look very presentable. To overcome this imperfection, I bought ready-made whipped cream and applied to the cake to make the finished product more soothing to the eyes. The finish touches - strawberries and matcha powder made the cake looks pretty good :) Now I am motivated to make a different layered cake!


The cake seemed to be well received by all, some friends have requested for recipe so here it is:

Green Tea Pound Cake
125g butter (at room temperature)
3/4 cup of sugar
3 eggs
125g philladelphia cream cheese
1 cup plain flour
1/2 tbp baking powder
1/2 tsp green tea matcha powder (I actually used 4 times the amount as I love green tea)
1/2 tsp salt

Red Bean filling:
600ml thicken cream
1/2 cup red bean

Method:
Beat butter and sugar until fluffy and light. Add cream cheese and beat to mix well. Add in lightly beaten eggs (one at a time). Combine dry ingredients well and sift before folding into the mixture. Pour well combined mixture into lined 8"round cake pan and bake in preheated oven at 180C or 360F for 40-50 minutes. (note baking time can vary slightly depending on your oven).

When cake is cooled, cut into half.
Whip 300ml thicken cream until soft peak formed. Add in 1/2 cup of red bean and fold in gently with a spatula (I used pre made red bean from a can, easily obtained from Asian grocery store)
Spread the red bean cream filling on the top of the bottom half of the cake.
Cover with top layer of the cake.
Whip 300ml the remaining thicken cream (300ml) until soft peak and spread on top cake layer and side. Refrigerate and decorate with strawberries and green tea powder (or other more creative ideas!) before serving. ENJOY!

Cake reigns

If the first thing you do when reading a menu is the unstoppable urge to flip straight to the dessert section, then we have something in common! I love cakes, period. *wink wink >p

Here are two of my favourites - Green Tea Pound Cake and Passionfruit and Raspberry Cake. I baked the green tea cake in a loaf pan and cut into little slices to bring to work to share with my colleagues. Most of the raspberry cake was also given to a friend to thank her for always giving me a lift from a Bible Study to home, thanks CM, you are God sent! :)

These are 2 very different cakes, the green tea cake is light, fluffy while the raspberry and passionfruit cake is very rich and sweet.