Pandan Chiffon Cake (I)

I'm on the hunt for a good pandan chiffon recipe. I start by comparing recipes from Epicurative, The Best of Singapore Cooking, The Raffles Hotel Cookbook, and the four featured by ieat.

I put everything in Excel with the amount of flour in every recipe standardized to 100 g. All the other ingredients adjusted proportionately. (Yup, I'm a geek, and proud of it.) Here's the spreadsheet:

Once I'm comparing apples and apples, it's obvious The Best of Singapore Cooking has heap loads of everything, from coconut milk to oil, egg whites, egg yolks, and especially sugar and baking powder. Every . . . single . . . thing!

Hmm, doesn't seem right. BSC – out!

Epicurative and Raffles Hotel share practically the same oil-less ingredients, but the mixing methods are different. The latter whisks only the egg whites, and all of the sugar bar 10 g is added to unwhisked yolks. I don't like the method because whisked egg whites with only 10 g of sugar may be unstable, and unwhisked yolks doesn't have much volume.

Raffles Hotel – out!

I decide to try Epicurative's recipe, splitting the sugar between the whites and yolks, then whisking each lot separately. I bake the cake for 40 minutes, which is plenty for a 21-cm chiffon. The crust is brown, but the inside is still wet whilst the cooked part is dry. As the cake cools down, it shrinks badly since it isn't cooked through. There's probably too much coconut milk in the recipe.

Epicurative – out!

So, I'm left with ieat's four recipes.

Hmm, Asianbakes seriously stinges on yolks, whites, sugar and oil. Out!

Anna Chan's is an oil-less recipe. My experience with Epicurative's oil-less chiffon hasn't been good. Out!

Of the remaining two, ieat recommends the one "with more egg whites" from Kiamniangwong. Actually, the recipe has less whites than Prima's, per 100 g of flour. But it has more in absolute number because it's for a bigger cake. See? A spreadsheet helps!

I take the doctor's order since he has clinically tested his prescription. My verdict? I'm very impressed by the cake's texture which is as soft as Bengawan Solo's. But the taste, using pandan essence/paste, leaves much to be desired, not to mention the hideous colour.

How to make pandan juice?

Epicurative soaks finely ground ~~stones~~ leaves in water overnight, strains, then lets the mixture settle, and finally skims off the excess water floating above the juice.

After trying her method, my verdict is: it takes way too long, and it's difficult getting rid of the excess water, so the juice is too diluted.

I decide to adapt Epicurative's method. Ground pandan is mixed with coconut milk instead of water. Bingo! The coconut milk turns from virginal white to Martian green. All I have to do is get rid of the fibrous pulp with a strainer.

Two hours later, I'm chomping on pandan cake that's full of the aroma of real pandan. It's light as air, soft as cotton, and green as a Martian – as good as Bengawan Solo's but baked by yours truly!

How to make pandan chiffon cake

Step-by-step guide

The gold standard for pandan chiffon cake is Bengawan Solo's version. This recipe is just as good if you use freshly squeezed coconut milk and pandan juice.