"Let them eat Cake Recipes"....by Tse Wei Lim
"I’m working on a series about the economics and power dynamics of food in Singapore (where I grew up). At the bottom of this email is Fiona’s pandan chiffon recipe, exactly as it was sent to my mum. I have no idea who Fiona is, but this is the best pandan chiffon I’ve had, and I wanted to share the recipe not because of the excellence of the cake, but because I was struck by how remarkably serious the recipe".
"Remember that pandan chiffon is basically the Dunkin’ Donuts Old Fashioned of Singapore, consumed almost as the bycatch of a coffee break. Fiona’s recipe starts with making first pandan extract then coconut milk. Neither activity is particularly difficult, but to insist on both suggests competitiveness. She was, I think, tuning this recipe like a race car".
Pandan Chiffon Cake (Fiona’s recipe)
Ingredients:
18 stalks pandan leaves
water
1 coconut, grated, or 300 ml coconut milk
9 egg whites
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 tablespoon caster sugar
8 egg yolks
160 grams caster sugar
150 grams cake flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
Method:
1. Make fresh pandan extract by blending the pandan leaves and a small amount of water (just enough to liquefy the pandan leaves) in a blender or a food processor. Make sure the pandan leaves are very finely ground. Strain the liquid and let it stand refrigerated, overnight.
2. The mixture will separate into two parts, water on the top and a thick, green juice that sinks to the bottom. This is the pandan extract and this recipe calls for 2 1/2 tablespoons of this juice. Gently pour away the water. If you have excess pandan essence, freeze it in ice cube trays for subsequent cakes.
3. Pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius.
4. Buy fresh grated coconut from a wet market (300 ml is about 1 coconut’s worth of milk) and extract the fresh coconut milk by squeezing it from the grated coconut. To extract the coconut milk, you have to add a little water to the ground coconut and then wring the damp coconut in a cheesecloth or towel. I gave the recipe to a friend who was wringing dry coconut until her helper said, “Mam, must add water first.” Only buy the fresh coconut on the day of baking, as it will not keep more than a day.
5. Beat the egg whites with cream of tartar and the tablespoon of caster sugar until stiff. You can omit the cream of tartar, as I do, but your cake will have larger air pockets, as the cream of tartar helps to bind the beaten egg white tightly together.
6. In a separate bowl, add the remaining 160 grams of caster sugar to the egg yolks and whisk. Add the coconut milk and the 2 1/2 tablespoon of pandan extract together, then add the cake flour, baking powder and salt.
7. Fold the egg white mixture into the egg yolk mixture gently and pour into a bundt pan. This recipe works best with a bundt pan to ensure that the chiffon rises and bakes evenly.
8. Bake the cake for 35 minutes, cool and slice the cake out of the pan with a thin bladed knife.
NB: My mum bakes at 75 min at 160C instead.
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