Tofu Pandan Chiffon Cake

I just came back from a 5D3N trip (2D being red-eye flights) to Hiroshima/Miyajima, totally deadbeat. Hopefully could regain my energy soon to sort out the photos and blog about the trip (as well as 2 other previous trips to Maldives and Hong Kong, GOSH, I'm so slacked!).

Anyway, I did this before my trip and realised that I forgot to publish the post. Here goes :p

I came across this Tofu Pandan Chiffon Cake in a Tofu Recipe Book called Hanky-Panky with  Beancurd "吃豆腐" (I know, such corny titles!) recently and was totally drawn to it (to the recipe and not the title)! The recipe is slightly different from the usual Pandan Chiffon Cake that I'm familiar with. Baking powder and coconut milk are not used; in replacement of coconut milk, silken tofu/soft beancurd is used. Some steps are also new to me, such as preheating the chiffon pan.

Tofu is definitely a healthy alternative to coconut milk so I was raring to try the recipe. Yes, I bought the recipe book as it features 50 recipes using tofu. Since tofu has such high nutritional value, the book will definitely come in handy for my family meals (perfect excuse to buy yet another recipe book :p).

So the very first recipe I attempted was the Tofu Pandan Chiffon Cake :) With the experience gained from past attempts on Pandan Chiffon Cake and Orange Chiffon Cake, the steps were fairly manageable this time. As usual, extracting pandan juice is tedious and luckily it was only a small quantity. The arm breaking part came with the beating of the egg whites till stiff peak form. I should have used my electric mixer but decided to "exercise" my arm muscles :p

After 50 minutes of baking, the chiffon cake turned out quite alright though not as pretty as my other attempts. The top part cracked a little but at least the cake looked decent enough. It was raining when I took this photo so the photo didn't turn out well (heehee, lousy excuse).

Now for the taste test. The cake texture was cottony light, moist and fluffy with tender crumbs. The tofu taste was not very distinct, just a tinge from the bits of mashed tofu in the cake. I only mashed the tofu this time, and I wondered whether the results would be different if I were to puree the tofu? Shall try that next time. Yep, I'm definitely baking this cake again. Will update the result of pureeing the tofu then.

And oh yes, hubby and son love the cake too :) But it's better not to keep the cake for more than a day, as I think the tofu turned a little sourish the next day.

Tofu Pandan Chiffon Cake

(Makes one 8 inch chiffon cake, serving 10 to 12)

Ingredients

• 80g low protein flour (I use Prima Cake Flour)
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 40g egg yolk
• 50g caster sugar
• 35g salad oil (I use canola oil)
• 50g pandan juice (extracted from about 70g of pandan leaves)
• 110g silken tofu
• 160g egg whites (about 4-5 eggs, depending on size)
• 30g caster sugar
• 1/8 tsp cream of tartar

Method

1. Preheat an 8 inch chiffon cake pan at 180 degree celsius for 10 minutes.
2. Sift flour and salt into a mixing bowl and set aside.
3. Rinse pandan leaves, cut into small pieces and blend them into grassy green using food processor or chopper. Squeeze the grassy green to extract 50g of pandan juice (add a little water will make it easier to squeeze).
4. Rinse tofu, dry with kitchen towel and mash.
5. Combine egg yolks with 50g sugar and mix well. Add salad oil, pandan juice and mashed tofu, stir until blended.
6. Add the egg yolk mixture into the flour mixture and fold till just blended.
7. Combine egg whites with 30g sugar in a large, clean and grease-free mixing bowl. Beat using a hand whisk till slightly thickened. Add in cream of tartar and beat until stiff, glossy peak form. Do not over-beat. (alternative to manual whisking, an electric mixer could be used, but end off with hand whisking to make sure egg whites at the bottom of the mixing bowl are well blended).
8. Add one-third of the egg white mixture into the egg yolk-flour batter, and fold gently until almost blended. Add half of the remaining egg white mixture to the batter and likewise fold gently. Lastly, scrape the batter into the egg white mixture bowl and fold into the remainly one third egg whites.
9. Pour batter gently into the chiffon pan. Bake for 40-50 minutes. If surface of cake browns too fast, cover the top with a piece of aluminium foil after 30-35 minutes of baking.
10. Remove cake from oven and immediately turn it upside down. Remove the cake from the pan when slightly warm. Best eaten within a day.