1st Cake Production - Pandan Chiffon Cake & the making of

If you ask me "Is this really your 1st attempt baking chiffon cake?". My answer would be Yes and No.

Reason why, I remembered helping my mother baking this chiffon cake 20 years ago. Basically helping her to prepare the ingredients and do the "manual whisking" (no machine). So, I gained a lot of experience.

So, few days after buying the microwave oven (after I baked the gingerbreadman cookies that I've promised my daughter), I decided to try something that I feel confident with... familiar with.. dang dang dang dang... here you go, my Pandan Chiffon Cake. And most importantly, I do not need measurement cups or measure ingredients in grams, ml, etc. My mommy just use soup spoon and teaspoon =)





This is the look after cutting into pieces.



Looks nice, taste nice and it only lasted for 2 days. I was surprised that the next day after coming back from work, the cake tray only left 2 pieces of the cake :P

Baked on forgot liao, i think early Jul 2009.

Note added on 12 Aug 2009: My 82-year-old grandma-in-law always prompts this question to me "why today you didn't bake pandan cake?"

I will try to bake pandan cake as often as possible, making it available all the time in the cake tray =)

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THE MAKING OF...

Measurement Tools:

• Spoon for soup or we call it soup spoon


• Spoon for tea or we call it teaspoon

Ingredients:

• 7 eggs, see below for details.


• 7 soup spoon of cooking oil


• 7 soup spoon of caster sugar


• 7 soup spoon of plain flour/all-purpose-flour


• 7 soup spoon of (coconut milk + pandan juice)
   You may pound the pandan leaves by adding a bit of coconut mik, then squeeze the pandan. Alternatively, omit the pandan leaves and add 1 teaspoon of pandan flavour/paste and a little green colouring.


• 1/3 teaspoon of baking powder


• 1/3 teaspoon of baking soda


• 1/3 teaspoon of cream of tartar

Step-by-step:

1. Get a small bowl and a medium bowl. Crack the egg into the small bowl, use your soup spoon to scoop the egg yolk and put in the medium bowl. Pour the egg white into the mixing bowl. Repeat this step for the rest of the eggs. DO NOT leave egg yolk in the egg whites bowl.


2. In the mixing bowl (with the egg whites), add caster sugar and cream of tartar. Beat till white, thick and creamy. We will name this Mixture_A.


3. Preheat oven to 150C and put in the chiffon pan for 5-10 minutes. This is to heat up the pan.


4. While the beating and heating in progressing, mix plain-flour/all-purpose-flour, baking powder and baking soda together and sieved.


5. Add cooking oil and coconut milk (with pandan juice/flavour) to medium bowl (with egg yolks), lightly beaten (you may use a fork to do so). Let's name this Mixture_B.


6. Once the Mixture_A is done (check tips for details), add half of the sieved-flour into the mixture and followed by half of the Mixture_B. Whisk (check tips for details) slowly until well combined. Repeat this step for the other half of sieved-flour and Mixture_B.
   
   
7. Take the hot chiffon pan out from oven, pour in the cake mixture into the pan and slightly shake the chiffon pan to allow mixture spread evenly.


8. Baked chiffon cake for 30 minutes @ 150C. Then, continue for another 10 minutes @ 180C. Do put in the aluminum foil on top of the cake as a 'cover' @ the 35th-minutes to avoid the cake gets burnt.


9. Tick-tack-tick-tack, ting! Once it's done. Remove the cake from oven and quickily invert it to avoid 'sinking' :) let it cool before unmold, cut and enjoy!

Good-to-know Tips:

1. My recipe is based on normal chiffon pan. If your chiffon pan size is larger, add ingredients from 7 to 8. You may still use the same amount of the baking powder, baking soda and cream of tartar.


2. How you know the egg white+caster sugar+cream of tartar is really done? When you flip the mixing bowl up-side-down, trust me, the mixture will not drop! It will take roughly 5-7 minutes of beating. Do not beat too long as your cake will tender to "explode" :) I proved it and you can see from the slideshow above. I need to do the photo-ing, so I let the machine beat the egg whites for a little longer :P


3. Let it cool completely before unmolding, normally I let it 'alone' for 1-1^1/2 hours =) Reason being, without cooling down completely, the cake tends to be 'broken into pieces' easily or stick with the pan when you unmold. However, if you try to let it cooled too long, you can feel the cake is "wet" when trying to cut/unmold.


4. Whisk whisk whisk, what's it? Navigate to google.com and perform image search for 'whisk', you should be able to see how it looks like =)

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