‘Where flowers bloom, so does hope’ – Lady Bird Johnson. Today is Mother’s Day and this is not my favourite day in this season of my life. Mum’s in a nursing home and we can’t visit and stuff like that. Oh well, and since I believe that all things work for the good of those who love Him and is called according to His purpose, I should not dwell in this unhappiness. I baked a pandan cake for my MIL who does not like butter in her cakes. I haven’t baked pandan cake in a while and it’s nice to revisit this bake and level it up with some decoration. I adapted this recipe with whatever ingredients I have in my fridge.
(makes a 7-inch chiffon) (to include decorations, use 1.5 times the recipe)
Ingredients
- 110g top flour
- 100g coconut milk (I used almond milk)
- 70g canola oil
- 60g castor sugar (for egg whites)
- 20g castor sugar
- 10g corn flour
- 6 eggs separated
- 1 tsp pandan paste
- 1/4 tsp cream of tartar
- 1/4 tsp salt
To include only if you want to do the decorations
- pink, green for decorations
- melted white chocolates
Method (skip steps 15 – 17 and 21 – 23 if you are not doing decorations)
- Preheat oven to 160 degrees C.
- Sift flour, corn flour and salt together.
- Place egg yolks in a large mixing bowl, add 20g sugar and whisk to combine.
- Add oil slowly, whisking as you add.
- Add milk, whisking as you add.
- Add flour and fold into the yolk mixture and set aside.
- Whisk egg whites in a mixer fitted with a balloon whisk until foamy.
- Add cream of tartar and whisk a bit more.
- Add the 60g sugar a tablespoon at a time, allowing the sugar to be mixed in before adding more sugar.
- Whisk till medium peak is formed.
- If you are not doing decorated, you can add the pandan paste to the yolk mixture before adding the meringue.
- Add about a third of the meringue and whisk it into the yolk mixture, you don’t have to be too gentle at this point.
- Add half of the remaining meringue, folding gently into the yolk mixture.
- Finish off folding the meringue into the mixture. Stop when you cannot see the egg white anymore.
- At this point, I scooped about 6 tablespoons for the white mixture, another 6 where I added pink colouring and the rest of the 6 tablespoons, I added green colouring.
- Bake the coloured batter in lined sheet pans.
- To the rest of the batter, add pandan paste.
- Pour the pandan batter to prepared chiffon pan. Wrap the chiffon pan in aluminium foil and place in a tray of hot water.
- Bake the chiffon pan in the tray of hot water for about 50 minutes and the sheet pans for about 20 minutes in preheated oven of 160 degrees C.
- Once bakes, cool the chiffon cake upside down and turn the cake out from the sheet pan.
- Cut leaves out of the green cake using leaf shaped cutters.
- Cut rounds out of the pink and white cake using small round cutters (about 2cm in diameter). I used the ends of a piping tip.
- To create roses, join the rounds together and hold them together using melted white chocolates. About 3 – 4 roses will be enough to decorate a 7-inch chiffon.
My MIL likes the cakes and the family love the texture too. I’ll bake this again without the decorations anytime.