“Earth mother bakes green cake”…

To satiate my curiosity and desire to cook with seemingly bizarre local ingredients, I gave making a Pandan cake a go. Well it was pretty successful. It tasted good and was a delightful minty green. My kids thought this was the best thing about it! AND my friend’s Singaporean elderly mother was very complimentary so it must have been pretty good for a white girl.

If you didn’t know, Pandan cake is a traditional Singaporean cake, it is a sponge cake usually shaped in a ring, flavoured and coloured with Pandan (a locally grown green leafy vegetable).

The verdict: My curiosity has been satiated (check) and whilst it was a tasty cake, for me the ends didn’t justify the cake making means. So will probably stick to good old Victoria Sponges for now. On the plus side I learnt the proper name for a ring cake tin thingy – a Bundt tin. I know, shameful, and I call myself a baker!

This recipe is from The Baking Biatches’ blog.

110g cake flour
5 eggs
60ml fresh coconut milk
60g vegetable oil
1/4tsp baking powder
20 pandan leaves
4 tbsp water
120g caster sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Make up your pandan extract a day in advance… see the para beneath the following three images.

Chop leaves roughly

 

Blitz on high with water for 3-5 minutes

 

Push chopped leaves through a sieve to extract juice

 

Blitz in a food processor the leaves together with 4tbsp water. Then using a sieve and spoon seperate the pulp and the juice. Place in the fridge and leave overnight for the dark green extract and water to seperate. After 24 hours gently pour off clear liquid.

Preheat your oven to 150 degrees celsius. Grease and line a 22cm or 9 inch Bundt (ring tube) pan.

Sift baking powder and cake flour and set aside.

Put the coconut milk in a medium large bowl. Add 2 tbsp of pandan extract to the milk and gently whisk in.

Combine coconut milk and all pandan extract

 

Add half (60g) of the caster sugar to the egg yolks and gently whisk till combined (but not more than 1-2 minutes).

Add 1/3 of coconut milk mixture and mix well for a few more minutes. Add 1/3 of sifted flour and mix well. Repeat the coconut milk and flour till all combined. Add oil and vanilla extract, mix and set aside.

Thoroughly fold in egg whites to cake mix

Mix egg whites till frothy. Add the remaining 60g sugar and whisk eggs until they form firm peaks that hold their shape. Fold 1/3 of egg whites into the cake mix, and ensure thoroughly and evenly combined. Hubble bubble toil and trouble!

Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl. Several blogs emphasise how important it was to ensure the mix is evenly combined to avoid all sorts of malformed cakes! Repeat twice more till all egg white is combined.

Spoon mixture into your cake tin and bang tin down to ensure mixture is flat with no air bubbles – and bake for 50-60 minutes in middle of oven. I am not the owner of a Bundt tin as yet so used two loaf tins. I baked for 45 minutes as the cake was slightly smaller than it would have been in one tin.