Pandan Cake

This cake is the latest craze in the baking world.. pair this cake with gula melaka swiss meringue buttercream, heavenly! Lazy me do not want to go through the trouble of preparing the cream and piping and worrying about ants. The ants in my house are commando-trained..even sealed in ziploc bag or tupperware they can sneak in. Tsk tsk tsk

I prepared the pandan extract over the weekend and bake this cake on Tuesday for the boys breakkie. The fragrance of the pandan extract with coconut juice lingering in the kitchen and living room makes the hub took 2 cuppies the moment they are out of the oven.

I would strongly urge everyone using this recipe to reduce the sugar further because it is too sweet in my opinion even after I reduced the sugar by 50g. Cringing if it was to be paired with gula melaka SMB how sweet this cake will turn out.



Pandan Cupcakes (yield 12 cupcakes) (adapted from Bitter Sweet Spicy)

200g cake flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
125g unsalted butter, softened
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
200g castor sugar (I reduced this to 150g and it is still sweet)
2 large eggs, room temperature
75g coconut milk mix with 25g water (I used 25g pandan water)
2 tbsp pandan extract*




How?
- Line your cupcake pan with cupcake cups. Preheat oven to 180C.
- Combine and sift cake flour with baking powder and salt. Set aside.
- In your mixing bowl, beat butter with vanilla extract until it is creamy.
- Add in sugar gradually and beat until light and fluffy, it will take approximately 3 - 4 minutes.
- Beat in 1 egg at a time, ensuring it is combined well after each.
- Alternating between flour and pandan coconut mixture (flour-pandan coconut mixture-flour), add in to the butter mixture, mixing well each time.
- At the final flour addition, I use a hand whisk to combine the mixture so as not to overmix my batter.
- Fill cupcake liner to 3/4 full and bake for 25 minutes or until inserted skewers come out clean.

* To make your own pandan extract, use about 20 leaves of pandan, snip into small pieces. Add in 1/4 cup of water and using a food processor, blend until fine. Squeeze out the juice and let it sit in the fridge overnight. 2 layers will form, the light clear green is what I refer as pandan water and the darker green that sink at the bottom is pandan extract that gives you the nice green color to your bakes.

See how fine the crumbs of this cake is. Gone within a day..nothing left! Yay...