The very ambitious me tried my hands at baking Pandan Chiffon, not once, but twice. I’ve heard many horror stories about beginner bakers trying to bake Chiffon cakes, how their cakes fell flat and didn’t rise like a true chiffon should or the texture turning rubbery etc. All these, did not dampen my determination to try baking it. I love pandan chiffon cakes so does Declan.
Over the months, I collected quite a few different recipes. As usual, the lazy me will try to sieve out the easiest recipe and use it. However, for pandan chiffon, the recipes don’t differ much. The only differences are some recipes use coconut milk, some don’t, some use pandan juice and others don’t.
For my 1st attempt, I used a recipe which use coconut milk and I replace pandan juice with pandan paste out of laziness as usual. I am an baking idiot, so needless to say, I stick very closely to what the recipe says, including the length of baking time. My 1st chiffon turned out like that :

The skin was really thick and got burnt, but at least the cake did rise and the inside looks pretty good too!

Although the cake did rise, it did not rise really gloriously. Reason being I use a baking pan that is much bigger than the recommended. The texture inside was fine but it didn’t really have a strong pandan smell. Thus mil suggested that I bake 1 more using panda juice.
So my 2nd attempt, I used another recipe, which exclude coconut milk but include pandan juice. The result was like this :

This time i shorten my baking time by 5mins. The top skin still turned out thick. The colour is not as pretty. I should have added a drop or 2 of green colouring to make it look greener. The colour is just the natural colouring from the pandan juice. This cake did look prettier, but the texture is not so great. It’s dryer than the 1st attempt. I suspect it may be due to the way I mix/fold the ingredients or the whisking of the egg white. This cake is a bit too dry and crumpy but it smelt good!
Then came the suggestion from hubby, why not I try baking another one with both coconut milk and pandan juice…… I would… but not this week… otherwise we’ll all be eating pandan chiffons for 3 weeks consecutively….. no matter how much i love this cake, this is not the way to eat it!