Pandan Chiffon Cake (Cooked Dough Method)

This recipe has been in draft form for over a year now! I've made it a few times already, yet been procrastinating about blogging, as usual. Getting more and more lazy to write these days. *sigh*

Anyways, I seriously want to record it down formally because I really love this recipe. Over the past decade I've baked many Pandan Chiffon Cake and other flavours of Chiffon Cake, so far the cooked dough method is my favourite as the cake always turn out to be more moist and tender, and I don't have to use any baking powder or cream of tartar using cooked dough method.

However, it's not easy to get it right all the time, so there are some flavours of chiffon cake that I still stick to the usual method. Actually cooked dough method is not that far off from the usual method, just one more step involved in "cooking the batter" before folding in the meringue. Somehow this yields a more moist cake. Personally I prefer moist and tender chiffon, don't like the drier texture ones.

Chiffon cake is still one of my favourite cakes to bake, but of course the challenge is, how to get it consistent and it is something I'm still learning. Hope that in time to come, I can bake more flavours and achieve good results all the time!

Pandan Chiffon Cake

(makes one cake using 21cm chiffon pan)

Ingredients

• 50g unsalted butter (or neutral tasting cooking oil)
• 90g cake flour
• 60g coconut milk
• 60g homemade pandan extract (blend 15-20 pandan leaves with a bit of water, strain and let mixture rest overnight, use the dark green extract that settles at the bottom)
• 5 egg yolks (M/L size egg, between 60-65g)
• 5 egg whites (M/L size egg, between 60-65g)
• 80g caster sugar

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160 degree celsius, top and bottom heat.
2. Melt butter in a small pot over very low heat. Once butter is melted, add in cake flour and stir quickly to form a dough.
3. Add coconut milk and stir the mixture till dough is well-mixed into a thick batter.
4. Add pandan extract and mix well into batter.
5. Add egg yolks one at a time, mix well into batter. Batter will be thick with texture like soft custard.
6. Add egg whites into mixing bowl with pinch of salt, beat using electric mixer at medium high speed, add sugar gradually and beat till stiff peak meringue.
7. Add one scoop of meringue into batter, stir quickly to mix well. 
8. Add 1/3 of remaining meringue into batter, fold quickly but gently to mix the meringue with batter.
9. Add the next 1/3 of meringue into batter, fold quickly but gently to mix the meringue with batter.
10. Finally pour the batter into the bowl with remaining meringue, fold quickly but gently.
11. Pour the batter into chiffon pan, give the pan 2-3 gentle knocks on the counter top, then send into oven to bake at 160 degree celsius for 45-50 mins. *if the top of the cake browns too fast, cover with a piece of aluminium foil after 30 mins.
12. After the cake is baked (if necessary, test using a skewer or cake tester, the stick should be clean), invert the pan over and let it cool down completely before unmoulding.
13. After the cake has cooled completely, unmould from pan. Cut into slices to serve. The cake is actually best served the next day for flavours to fully develop. If eating the next day, store in airtight container and cut the next day.

This cake is one of my family's favourite cake, and also well-liked by many of my friends who tried it. Although I would like to bake it more often, I'm always lazy to make pandan extract :p And pandan extract doesn't keep for long, so each time I only make small quantity, making it a tedious task whenever I feel like baking.

Oh well, good things never come easy and takes effort and time, right? Anyways, I'm so glad that I finally completed this blog post! Yes!