Rainbow Pandan Chiffon Cake

So, having loads of baking buddies can be really fun and inspirational but when most of my baking buddies are stay-home-mums (like Sharron!), they can bake almost any time they want except for when they're out doing mummy chores or having food with the rest of us! How I wish I were a tai-tai at home without much worries so all I can do is to bake all day! But a dream is just a dream.. it's definitely tough to depend on one in a family to support the family. Most families function on dual-incomes and the fav boy and I are no exception!

 So on Wednesday night, my hands were mightly itchy and were dying to bake this new idea I had for pineapple tarts! However, as I had a really long day in school and Hort Park prior to that, baking pineapple tarts were kinda out of the question. 

Then, Sharron needed some help to bake Tisha a cake for her birthday on Saturday! We decided to try out a rainbow chiffon like this and even though I reached home at 10+ that evening, the itchy-handed me decided to give the idea a try since I had left over pandan juice from the day before as well as left over coconut milk! So here is my not-too-successful-in-terms-of-color-but-still-tastes-great Rainbow Pandan Chiffon Cake! 

Rainbow Pandan Chiffon Cake Recipe

My baking tin had a base of 20cm

110g cake flour

5 eggs (55g)

60ml fresh coconut milk

60g oil (I used Canola oil)

1/4 tsp baking powder

10 pandan leaves

4 tbsp water

120g castor sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

3 gel food colouring of your choice

Steps:

Preheat oven to 150 degree Celsius. Wash and cut the pandan leaves into small pieces. Exclude the tips of the pandan leaves (3cm) as they will make your fingers itch. Blend the small pieces of pandan leaves with the water.

Strain it with a sieve.

Squeeze it dry.

Preheat oven to 150 degree Celsius. Sift the flour and baking powder.

Add the pandan juice to the coconut milk.

Add half the sugar (60g) to the egg yolks and mix well.

Then, add 1/3 of the pandan juice mixture followed by 1/3 of the flour and mix well. Repeat twice till flour and pandan mixture is incorporated.

Your mixture should look like this.

Portion the oil into 4 bowls. Add a small bit of food colouring into each bowl and mix well. The mixture may seem coagulated but fear not, it will mix well into the batter later on.

Split the egg yolk batter into 4 portions.

Add the various coloured oil into each bowl and stir well.

All mixed! (My purple was a lil' too heavy!)

Add the remaining sugar into the egg whites that has been whisked till' it's frothy with bubbles.

Whisk till stiff peaks have been achieved.This is how you test for 'doneness'! Stiff peaks = stiff shapes!  Portion egg whites into 4 portions. I only coloured 3 portions and kept one portion the natural pandan green.

To each coloured batter, add in 1/3 of the portioned egg whites and fold in the egg whites.

To the remaining 2/3 egg whites, add the egg yolk mixture. Fold in. I love doing mine by hand just like how I like to fold my cake batter for my sponge cakes. This video will show you how.

Pour the batter into the cake mould and spread out as even as possible with a spatula. Do try to use a spatula (dry) as there is relatively little batter each layer for one to 'shake' the batter into place.

Repeat steps for the following 3 layers, smoothing out each layer as evenly as possible without 'poking' one layer into the other.

Each smoothed out layer should look like this. Bake in the preheated oven for 60 minutes.

Completed product! (:

Invert on a raised platform and allow cake to cool down completely. This should usually take around 30 mins to an hour but as impatient as I usually am, I blast a standing fan at my baking tin and it's usually cooled in about 15 minutes!

Most people remove their chiffon cakes with the use of a spatula or knife. I prefer the hand removal method.. so here's a video that will show you how.

So, once the cake has been removed, serve it upside down..

The results of the cake did amaze me.. somehow these chiffon cakes layer better than rainbow cupcakes which I previously did! The natural pandan green really looked pale in comparison to the other colours! My purple was tad too purplish and my red looked like peach/orange! So, I guess it takes a lil' trial and error to get the colours right. Nevertheless, this is one fun cake to bake though there's A LOT of washing to do due to the many mixtures we had to prepare but looking at the final product and knowing that it made Tisha and Tasha (Sharron's girls) so happy to have it for their breakfast, it was all worth the late night baking! (: 

I'd love to see the bakes or stuff you've cooked using the blog's recipe! Do share photos of stuff you've baked or cooked using the blog's recipe with me either via FB message to http://facebook.com/limcynthia OR http://facebook.com/thebakingbiatch OR via email at cynthia.lim.hl@gmail.com! I look forward to hearing from you! (: