How to make a Pandan Chiffon Cake the easy way...

Pandan chiffon cake in star paper mould

A slice of Pandan cake

I just love chiffon cake and have managed to work out a recipe that has not too many eggs and works well with ingredients you can buy in the UK. Here it is... As you can see it was tried and tested. I made this many times....

Happy Easter!

If you want to avoid cracking, you have to handle it very carefully when you put it upside down to cool. Better still, use a ring cake pan.

I love this cake, it's so soft, like a sponge, so light and the amounts of fat and sugar are not high.

Pandan chiffon cake easy recipe

Ingredients:
3 egg yolks
50 g sugar
75 ml vegetable oil 
70 ml coconut cream (you can make it with dried grated coconut)
100 g cake flour
3/4 tsp of pandan paste 

1.5g salt (optional)
½ tsp of vanilla essence
1 tsp baking powder

For the meringue mixture:
3 egg whites
50 g granulated sugar
1/2 tsp of cream of tartar


Heat the oven to 170 C degrees, gas mark 3. In a small bowl, mix the baking powder and flour. Set aside.

Make the meringue by beating egg whites and tartar with an electric whisk. Add sugar gradually.

Beat egg yolks, add sugar and continue until they reach a pale yellow colour.

Add coconut cream, oil, vanilla, pandan paste. Combine the flour gradually and stir with a wooden spoon. Fold the meringue into the green mixture carefully.

Put into a greased tall ring cake pan, around 23cm diameter (this is the best shape, as you can see in the picture, if you use another type of cake tin you risk cracking)... Bake for 55 or 60 minutes. 

Place a sheet of foil on the shelf above the cake, a nifty tip I learned online but remove it for the last 10 minutes. When cooked, you need to turn the cake upside down. You can use the neck of a bottle to cool it without ruining its surface (it is rather sticky when warm).

Cool for an hour and the cake will detach neatly from the tin. Use a serrated knife for cutting the cake.

What is success?

I wrote an article on LinkedIn summing up my careers so far (marketing and journalism) as fruit of persistence, willingness to learn new skills and not listening to negative people. It has not been easy as English is not my first language and have encountered discrimination as a woman and foreigner. But one has to soldier on because otherwise you go nowhere...

I have been battling with SAD for a few years, seasonal depression, and keeping busy helped me. I had a horrible year where RSI took away one of my coping mechanisms, gardening. I am back to my old self now and accepting that ageing is happening but I am still a fighter and won't accept ageism in the workplace. I am encountering this in marketing and did encounter it in journalism only aged 37.

I think I am successful, despite the dark moments when I doubt myself or succumb to negative vibes from other people, which are getting rarer because I have learnt the hard way that you must please yourself first - trying to please everyone does not work.

This does not mean being selfish, it's making yourself more secure so you can then help and support others. I still do a good amount of volunteer work and do turn down paid work to continue doing it because I have realised that it makes me happy. So for me success is to have finally achieved a level of financial comfort (not being rich) that allows me to work and volunteer, learn and improve myself.

Learning makes me happy too, so what if I have too many skills in some people's eyes? I enjoy the challenge of mastering something new and if you cannot get it, you are narrow minded and I do not care about your opinions any more. Find another victim to pour your jealousy and bitterness on - and that is very true in the workplace too. If you are miserable, keep it for yourself and don't ruin it for others. I have had enough of being a nice mouse, I might be small but I have teeth.