I missed two friends’ birthdays and thought I’ll bake a simple cake for them since we were having a Lunar New Year gathering. They wouldn’t like cakes that are overly sweet or decorated, so I chose to bake a simple pandan cake. The cake cracked though, I guess I need to do a few more bakes to study my oven and get that right temperature to achieve smooth tops for my sponge cakes. The bottom layer did not crack though, so I think it could be the higher temperature on the upper layer, getting there…. soon… The cake was fluffy and soft nonetheless. Here’s Jeannie Tay’s recipe.
(Makes a 8 inch cake)
Ingredients
- 100g top flour
- 100g milk (I skipped the coconut milk, you can mix 50g milk with 50g coconut milk or 100g coconut milk)
- 100g caster sugar
- 70g canola oil
- 6 eggs, separated
- 1 tsp pandan paste
- 1 tsp cream of tartar (optional)
- a pinch of salt
Method
- Preheat the oven at 170 degrees and line the bottom of the baking tin with baking paper.
- Sift the flour and salt together and set aside.
- In a small pot, heat the oil to about 70 degrees or until you see streaks in the oil.
- Pour in the sifted flour and whisk to combine.
- Add the milk and pandan paste and combine.
- Add the yolks and whisk till combined.
- In a clean mixing bowl, whisk egg whites till foamy and add the cream of tar tar (this is optional, it works to stabilise the egg whites) and whisk till soft peak.
- Add the sugar a spoonful at a time and beat till firm peak.
- Add a third of the meringue into the batter and use a hand whisk to combine the egg whites and the batter. You do not need to be too gentle a this time because this step is just to make the batter to be at a similar consistency with the meringue for easier combining.
- Fold in the rest of the meringue gently till the egg whites is no longer visible. Do not over mix. Pour the batter into prepared baking tin.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes and lower the oven temperature to 145 degrees and bake for another 45 minutes.
- Leave to cool for a few minutes before unmoulding.
I really like that this is not as fragile as chiffon and not as dense as a pound cake, but still is soft and fluffy. A keeper, other than me having to achieve that smooth top.