Pandan Chiffon Cake

Want to learn how to make a really light, green and fluffy cake that’s different from your typical cakes? Then this is the perfect recipe for you! Pandan Chiffon cake is a very light cake that tastes absolutely delicious and is nothing like you’ve ever made before! It’s a really light, green and fluffy cake that’s different from your typical cakes and quite easy to make too.  

Pandan Chiffon cake originated in Indonesia, but is also a local speciality in Singapore and Malaysia. Its main flavouring is the juice from the Pandan leaves.

Nowadays, you can make pandan chiffon cake using either the juice from the Pandan leaves or store-bought pandan paste. The biggest difference between chiffon cake and regular cake is that chiffon cake is generally lighter and fluffier, and containts vegetable oil.

How to make Pandan Chiffon cake:

It’s taken my family so many tries to perfect this recipe – We made so many mistakes trying to figure out how to make this cake exactly right. All the ingredients I’ve listed below are required to make this cake. I really wouldn’t recommend altering the recipe much, as changing it even slightly can make such a big difference to the outcome of the cake. 

The ingredients you need to make this pandan chiffon cake includes all purpose flour, sugar, vegetable oil, water, eggs, a pinch of salt, pandan paste (or juiced) pandan leaves, cream of tartar powder and baking powder.

You can choose how green you want your cake to be. The darker, the more pandan paste you’ll need. Adding more pandan paste makes your cake more sweet, so you could consider lowering the sugar content. In the video, I used half a teaspoon of pandan paste, whilst in all the images I used 2 teaspoons of pandan paste. You can see a clear difference between the two cakes. 

. If you don’t want the cake to be pandan flavoured, an alternative is using lemon oil/essence. Here, the cake will turn out yellow instead of green. 

Below is a video on how to make this pandan chiffon cake, showing our step-by-step process. 

Is pandan chiffon cake healthy?

Pandan chiffon cake is not the healthiest dish to make. Like most desserts, it does contain a lot of sugar, however it’s definitely a cake worth trying!

How to make pandan chiffon cake light and fluffy:

The trick to making your pandan chiffon cake light and fluffy is to slowly mix in the beaten egg whites. You’ll want to manually add the egg whites a little at a time and fold it into the mixture in one direction. You don’t want to beat the egg whites into the mixture, or you’ll remove the air bubbles from the egg whites, stopping the cake from rising.

How to stop your pandan cake from sinking:

To stop the pandan chiffon cake from sinking, you need to let the cake cool upside down. Additionally, you’ll want to use a two-pieced chiffon cake tin. This is important, as you need to remove the outer part of the mould first before you loosen the bottom part of the mould from the cake. This will help keep the cake intact. You’ll want to buy a chiffon cake tin that does not have non-stick coating. The pandan cake needs to stick to the tin whilst it bakes – this will stop it from sinking and help it rise.

How to store pandan chiffon cake:

Once you let the cake cool, you can store it in an airtight container or using cling film. I don’t recommend storing it for longer than five days – the pandan cake tastes best fresh.

Can you freeze pandan chiffon cake?

Pandan chiffon cake tastes best fresh and I don’t recommend you freeze it unless absolutely necessary. The cake consistency could change after it is frozen.

Hints and Tips:

• Make sure you don’t grease the tin, as the cake needs to stick to the side of the tin so that it can properly rise.

• The more pandan paste you use, the greener and sweeter the cake will be. 

• This is quite a difficult recipe to make. It took my family many tries to perfect it. If the cake doesn’t turn out how you expect it to on your first try, try again, and alter it depending on your oven, temperature and tin.

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Try more of these delicious recipes:

• Banana Brookies (Chocolate Brownie Cookies)
• Millionaire’s Shortbread Recipe
• Chocolate Profiteroles
• Melt In The Mouth Pineapple Tarts

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Step-by-step process – images:

Ingredients

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Baking