Pandan Chiffon Cake

I was stuck in a rut a while back and to cheer me up, some friends decided that attempting to bake a pandan chiffon cake would help. It was an interesting experience and I had a lot of fun with it. Thank you girls, I'll always remember your kindness!

We cheated a bit with the recipe though… instead of blending the pandan leaves to get the juice out, we used a store bought pandan extract. We had to guess at how much pandan extract to use (it's not the same as juice!) But I think we overdid it a bit... It turned the cake so fluorecent green that it looked like it came from a nuclear plant. And I think our cake pan was too small as the cake mixture overflowed all over my friend's brand-new oven. Oops… =P  But the end result smelled and tasted great! Almost like it was store bought from the Singaporean bakery Bengawan Solo… almost… haha… ;-P

Anyway here's the recipe that my friend found and we sorta followed… it's really hard to get fluffy egg whites though...

Ingredients:
6 egg whites
125g castor sugar
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
6 egg yolks
100g sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
5 tbsp corn oil
2 tbsp pandan extract
100mL thick coconut milk
140g self-raising flour, sift

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180ºC. Whisk egg whites, sugar and cream of tartar in an electric mixer until just stiff.
2. Whisk egg yolks, sugar and vanilla essence until light and creamy.
3. Add in corn oil, pandan juice and thick coconut milk. Mix well.
4. Stir in sifted flour and fold in carefully and gently to mix.
5. Pour egg yolk mixture lightly into the egg white mixture. Mix evenly with a metal spoon or a plastic spatula.
6. Pour batter into an ungreased 22cm tube pan.
7. Bake in a preheated oven for 40-45 minutes or until cake is well browned and firm to the touch.
8. Remove cake from oven. Invert pan immediately.
9. Leave to cool, then remove cake from pan with the help of a thin-bladed knife.