Pandan & Coconut

What do you get when you pair off pandan leaves with coconut milk?

What comes right to my mind are: Nasi Lemak (rice cooked with coconut milk and pandan leaves), Kaya jam, Chendol and Pandan Chiffon cake. Do you know of other dishes which are created using these two ingredients?


To make a pandan chiffon cake has always been on my to-do list...in fact it is meant to be my first chiffon cake. I didn't get around to do it as most of the recipes call for the use of pandan juice, which you get by blending the pandan leaves with some water. Well, a blender is something that I do not have...and don't think I will buy one in the near future...as I know myself too well ...this piece of equipment will likely end up sitting in some dark corners in my kitchen cabinets.

With much encouragement and useful tips from my cyberfriend, vb, I managed to get around with the problem. The solution is this Koepoe Koepoe brand of pandan essence...with this, pandan juice is really not necessary.

Armed with the recipe shared by Baking Mum, I went about making my first pandan cake. Although her recipe is meant for a 18cm pan, I made the same amount for my my 16cm pan, and baked the remaining batter with muffin cups.


Hoping with greed to achieve a 'tall and mighty' cake, I filled my tiny pan almost 90% full! As a result, the cake surface erupted and cracked all over. The batter simply didn't have room to expand! Thanks to my equally tiny oven, I forgot to 'tent' the cake with a foil before it got burnt a little :(


The bottom or rather the top of the chiffon cake was much better...


except for the holes that I have made while trying to unmold it before it was completely cool off. You really need tonnes of patience with chiffon!

Other than the not too desirable appearance, the cake was moist, fluffy and 'springy',best described by the Chinese term "弹性". The 'sizzling" sound made while I was slicing it was very obvious. Yes, if you listen carefully, there is this sound produced when u slice a chiffon cake...not sure whether this is a good sign though? The pandan taste was not that apparently as I would expect...maybe it was because I only used 1/4 teaspoon of the pandan essence instead of recommended amount. I was advised by vb that too much of the essence, will make the colour of the cake looks like some science experiment went wrong, which I strongly agree!

As the recipe only used up 100ml of the coconut milk...I had to think of ways and means to use the balance 100ml...and so, I came up with this pandan loaf:

I fall back on this rather well received and reliable milk loaf recipe... I replaced the fresh milk with the remaining 100ml of coconut milk and top up with 50ml of water. Just like the chiffon cake, I only added in a 1/4 teaspoon of the pandan essence.

I played around a little with the shaping of the loaf bread...


I happened to come across this shaping method, which is actually meant for a bun, from a cookbook...after rolling out the dough into the shape of a large rectangle, I cut stripes on the shorter side of the dough, before rolling it up like a swiss roll. It was quite a futile effort as the stripes were not that prominent after the loaf was baked.


Once again, this recipe didn't fail me. I am not sure whether you will be convinced, just by looking at these photos, that the texture of this bread was almost comparable to it's chiffon counterpart.


It was light, soft and very airy. Although the pandan essence was very subtle in this loaf, but the overall taste was simply fabulous, especially with a generous spread of kaya jam. Another great way to combine pandan with coconut!