You can find pandan chiffon cakes in a lot of Asian bakeries. The base recipe for this can be found in the book, “Inspired Celebrations,” that I co-wrote with Ngoc Nguyen Lay and Caroline Tran. It’s the yogurt petits fours with coconut icing, where I use a jelly roll pan to make the petits fours. In this case, I used an 8×8-inch pan, made a few ingredient substitutions (like adding the pandan juice that I made), and the resulting cake turned out to be so good. Oftentimes I feel like the chiffon cakes you find at the bakeries can be too greasy but this cake was moist and not oily at all.
This is my last installment of using pandan leaves for now. I had a lot of fun making up these recipes and I hope you’ll have lots of fun eating them!
Pandan cake
makes 25 squares
7 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 extra-large eggs, at room temperature
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup + 1 Tbsp pandan juice
1/4 cup coconut milk
1/2 cup light vanilla yogurt
Preheat oven to 350 F. Butter a 8×8 pan and set aside. In a mixing bowl with a paddle attachment, beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time and continue to beat for about a minute after each addition, or until combined.
In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, cornstarch, baking soda, and salt. In another small bowl, whisk together the pandan juice, coconut milk, and vanilla yogurt.
Add about 1/3 of the flour mixture to the butter and egg mixture, beating until the flour is incorporated. Add 1/3 of the coconut milk mixture, beating until incorporated. Continue alternating additions, beating well after each addition, and ending with the flour mixture.
Pour the batter into the cake pan and bake for about 35 minutes, until the top of the cake is golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean. Cool the cake completely before cutting. When cool, make 4 equal-sized cuts both ways to make small squares. Serve as is, or dust powdered sugar on them before serving.
