Pandan Cake with Gula Melaka Swiss Meringue Butter Cream

We were invited to a niece’s birthday party about two weeks ago and one of the birthday cakes was this cotton soft pandan cake. The cake was really cotton soft with beautiful light green colour and pandan fragrant, but the icing was interesting. It is not overly sweet, rich but not butter heavy rich (if you know what I mean) and most importantly it has that familiar flavour which I couldn’t name. The combination of both is just really impressive, really I am not exaggerating here. Hubby has become a fan of this cake in the instant and I promised to look for the recipe.

So days passed after the birthday party, life went on as usual and of course I nearly forgot about that cake. And one day I saw someone posted a picture of the very similar cake with caption “best combination of flavour ever: pandan and palm sugar”! Aha that’s it, the mysterious familiar flavour that I couldn’t name on the butter cream. And hence the google search for the recipe began, although I could only find a very few of recipes around.

Because a lot of things here are new techniques to me, I really followed the recipe to a dot, except for very few adjustments as stated below. The cooked dough really gives that cotton soft texture, also not as porous as the usual chiffon cake. I think that is why this cake can hold its shape better than the chiffon cake. And here is the recipe exactly as per her blog:

Two 6″ Inch Round Cakes Recipe

Ingredients:

80 grams corn oil (I used rice bran oil)
130 grams cake flour or all purposed flour
½ tsp double action baking powder (I used same amount of regular baking powder)
½ tsp salt
6 egg yolks
1 whole egg
50 grams fresh milk
50 grams pandan juice (screw-pine leaves juice), very thick and concentrated juice.

6 egg whites
70 grams castor sugar
¼ tsp cream of tartar

Note: Since I don’t have two 6 inches pans, I used one rectangular 20 x 20 x 8 cm cake pan. The batter will fill up 3/4 full before baking and fit in 90% after baked. I also cheated on the pandan juice, I used few drops of pandan paste instead and increase the fresh milk amount to 100 grams to make up for omitting pandan juice.

Method:

  1. Preheat oven to 170C.
  2. Shift flour, salt and baking powder. Set aside.
  3. Combine fresh milk and pandan paste. Set aside.
  4. Heat corn oil in sauce pan over low heat then add in the shifted flour mixture and mix well. Remove from heat and transfer to a mixing bowl. Then add in milk and pandan mixture, mix with spatula until all incorporated. Gradually add in the egg yolk and whole egg mixture, stirring with a spatula or hand whisk until smooth. Set aside.
  5. Using an electric mixer, whisk egg white until frothy before adding cream of tartar and continue to beat until foamy. Gradually add in sugar and whisk until firm peaks formed (firm peaks is between soft peaks and stiff peaks).
  6. Mix 1/3 of meringue with yolk batter with a spatula. Add another 1/3 portion and fold gently. Then pour in balance of meringue. Fold gently using a spatula until well incorporated.
  7. Pour the batter into the 2 prepared round tin and tap tin lightly to remove air bubbles.
  8. Baked in water bath at 170C for 30 to 35 minutes. Then another 40 minutes at 150C.
  9. Remove from the oven and drop the pan at a height of 10 cm onto a table top. This will prevent cake from sinking.
  10. Unmould as soon as you can. To remove the cake from the pan, run a thin-bladed knife around the inside of the pan and invert the cake on non stick baking paper. Peel off baking paper from the base and re-invert onto a rack to cool.

GULA MELAKA SWISS MERINGUE BUTTERCREAM

Ingredients:

Gula Melaka Caramel:
50 grams gula melaka/palm sugar, crushed or chopped
2 pandan leaves, tied a knot
1/8 cup (25 ml) of water

Swiss Meringue Buttercream:
3 large egg whites
80 grams caster sugar
150 grams butter, room temperature, cut into small cubes
¼ tsp vanilla extract
¼ tsp salt

Method:

To prepare Gula Melaka Caramel:

  1. Combine gula melaka, pandan leave and water in a saucepan and bring to boil over medium heat. Keep on stiring until all the sugar has melted and reduce slightly. Remove from heat, strain & discard the pandan leaves. Keep aside to cool. The syrup will thicken as it cools.

To prepare Swiss Meringue Buttercream:

  1. Combine egg white and sugar in a heat-proof bowl over a pot of simmering water. Make sure the base of the bowl is not touching the water. Whisk with hand whisk until the sugar is dissolved. Rub between your fingers to check if there is any unmelted sugar.
  2. Transfer the egg white mixture to a bowl of mixer. With Whisk attachment, beat over high speed until stiff peaks and the mixture has cooled to room temperature.
  3. Turn down the speed and add in the butter cube gradually then turn to high speed. Beat until the mixture comes together. You may change to Paddle attachment. But, I did not.
  4. Add in salt and vanilla extract until well incorporated.
  5. Turn down the speed and in gula melaka one teaspoon at a time. Scrap the bowl with spatula and beat until all well combined. I used all the gula melaka caramel.

To Assemble the cake:

I halved my cake then spread a generous layer of swiss meringue buttercream then top with the other half  of the cake and cover all surface and sides of the cake with the remaining buttercream. Since I am making mine in 1 pan, I have some left over buttercream that I store in a closed container in the fridge.

Some Tips:

  • It is ok to rest the egg whites for SMBC in the fridge to cut down the cooling down time. This needs to be at room temperature when adding in butter.
  • Add the butter slowly while keep beating. You’ll see the mixture become curdled after adding in all butter. Just have some faith and keep beating then it will eventually come together. (I was so scared I had spoiled the whole batch when I saw that curdled but as I continued beating the mixture, it came together again)
  • After I halved my cake, I wrapped each of them tightly with cling wrap and placed them in the freezer for about 30 minutes before I spread the SMBC. By doing so, the cake seems to hold its shape better while spreading the butter cream and hence less crumbly – it just makes the job easier especially during hot summer days 🙂
Ingredients for the pandan cotton cake
Gula melaka swiss meringue butter cream
Pardon my “pale” pandan cake – before right out of oven and final product

Bagelen

I haven’t seen any bagelen sold in Sydney, unless in some Indonesian grocery shops, so I guess it is one of Indonesian snack (do correct me if I am mistaken). Basically, bagelen is made up sweet bread bun, halved, spread with some butter cream icing, and baked until dry and crispy. The butter icing is what really makes this snack tasty, it is sweet and slight hint of salty and most of all is buttery. Combined with the crispy sweet bun, just makes it perfect snack to accompany coffee or tea. Some people dip the bagelen to their hot coffee or tea to soften it, but I prefer it crispy (っ˘ڡ˘ς)

To be honest, I am attempting this mainly because of leftovers from this bread. Because the bread texture is not soft and even more so the next day, so hopefully it will save them by turning to bagelen. And here is the ingredient for the butter cream icing (I only made half batch for 8 sweet buns):

  • 50 grams sweetened condensed milk
  • 125 grams icing sugar
  • 250 grams margarine
  • 250 grams butter (if unsalted, add a tiny pinch of salt)

Mix all the ingredients together until well combined.

To make bagelen, halve sweet buns and lay on baking pan. Preferably leave them overnight so that they are dry. Since I am doing it kind of at last minute, I refrigerate my halved buns for about 3 hours.

Spread the butter cream icing generously to surface of each sweet buns.

Bake them on 120C for 40-60 minutes until they are crispy. Make sure to use lower temperature to avoid burning the sweet butter cream.

Once cool to room temperature, store them in airtight container to keep the crisp for longer.

Butter cream topping
That nutella filling of the buns actually added more kick to the buttery bagelen

Unfortunately, I forgot to take photos after baking. Hubby went after them too quickly! No, actually I had some as well and kept thinking I will take picture the next day when lighting is better, and never ended up doing it

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Mushroom (Look Alike) Bread

First post for 2017, yeayy!!! Anyway, I have been thinking of trying this out since I saw this post weeks before Christmas and of course it was December, too much eating out and not enough me time in the kitchen, hence the delay. The first thing that caught my eyes was the beautiful topping pattern, and they do remind me of dried shiitake mushroom, right? To make them look more alike to mushroom, I should have used muffin pan. But since I didn’t, the only thing that resembles mushroom is just the topping.

I followed the source recipe completely, and here it is again:

For the bread:
  • 350 grams bread flour
  • 50 grams sugar
  • 50 grams butter
  • 20 grams milk powder
  • 1.5 teaspoon dry instant yeast
  • 4 grams salt
  • 1 whole egg
  • 150 ml cold milk

Mix all ingredients except butter and salt, knead until elastic before adding the remaining ingredients. Knead until form a smooth and elastic dough. Set aside for proofing for about 1 hour or until double in size. Once it is double in size, punch the dough to remove trapped gas and shaped into little balls, add your favorite filling to each. Then place them in the baking pan. At this time, we brush the topping with the chocolate paste.

Brush the topping before second proofing (left) and the result after second proofing, look at those cracks (right)
For the topping:
  • 2 teaspoons cocoa powder
  • 2 teaspoons rice flour
  • 4 teaspoons water

Mix well the ingredients into a thick paste. Brush this chocolate paste to the topping of each bread. Leave the bread for second proofing until it almost double in size and cracks appear on each topping.

Bake them on 180C for about 15 minutes and enjoy!

These smell very chocolaty when taken out of oven

Note:

I personally think the bread is not that soft, so maybe next time if I do make this again, I will use the trusted tangzhong method. Also, I might have applied the paste too thick on each bun, they tasted a bit too bitter. I am thinking maybe I should add pinch of sugar to the topping paste next time. Not sure though whether it will change the texture or anything.

Apart from that, I really love how these breads look (。◕‿◕。)

Chicken Egg Roll

As you (Indonesian readers) would have been guessed, this chicken egg roll is one of most popular staple at food joint Hoka Hoka Bento. I tried this recipe for hubby’s birthday as per his request to have a “HokBen” meal for his birthday. Last year, I only made Ekkado (click here for recipe) and the salad; and I saw on this chicken egg roll on Youtube just weeks ago and thought I should attempt this as well.

So, without further ado, here is the list of ingredients – source Kokiku.tv:

For the wrapper:
  • 1/2 cup of all purpose flour
  • 50 ml water
  • 1/2 tablespoon of sugar
  • 2 whole eggs
  • 1/2 tablespoon melted butter
  • pinch of salt and pepper

Blend all the ingredients together until smooth and well combined.

Heat a non stick pan, brush lightly with oil then wipe with paper towel to get rid of excess oil.

Pour some of the wrapper batter on the pan, swirl the pan around to distribute batter evenly to a thin layer. Let it cook on low to medium heat, and remove when it is fully cooked. Repeat the process for the remaining batter.

For the filling:
  • 300 grams chicken mince (I used thigh fillet mince)
  • 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
  • 1 teaspoon of light soy sauce
  • 1 tablespoon of sugar
  • 2 egg whites
  • 1 teaspoon of sesame oil
  • 1 tablespoon of corn flour
  • salt and pepper to taste

Mix all the filling ingredients together until well combined.

Place 2-3 tablespoons of filling on a piece of wrapper and roll, make sure to fold the ends to secure the filling.

Wrap each roll with cling wrap or aluminium foil.

Steam the chicken egg rolls for about 10 minutes. Once cools, slice the rolls at angles.

Lightly coat each piece with all purpose flour before deep-frying to golden in colour.

Enjoy with chili and tomato sauce 🙂

After steamed, ready for flour coating and deep frying…

Black Cherry Cheese Tart

Since I bought a jar of jam for bolu gulung weeks ago and still got half jar left on the fridge, I decided to give this cheese tart recipe a go. Rather than jut let the jam to go to waste, we should make use of it, right? I don’t usually have my bread/toast with jam and hubby prefers Nutella himself, so if I ever bough jam it would mainly for my baking experiments only.

A while ago I noticed recipe for these little cheese tarts with pretty patterns and of course, I put this on my to-try list. I think using blueberry jam will make the colour more pop out and prettier purplish. But since I have only black cherry jam, we shall use that instead.

For the tart pastry I use this eggless recipe simply because hubby prefers this texture than the one with egg. I think it is crispier and less crumbly compared to ones with eggs.

And here are the ingredients for the cream cheese filling (source here):

  • 300 grams cream cheese at room temperature
  • 80 grams icing sugar
  • 1 teaspoon lemon paste (I used 1.5 teaspoon of lemon juice)
  • 15 grams vanilla essence (I used 1 teaspoon vanilla extract)
  • 50 grams whipping cream
  • 25 grams sifted corn flour
  • 2 large eggs
  • your favorite jam for topping

Whisk cream cheese and icing sugar until fluffy and creamy.

Add in lemon paste, vanilla essence and egg one at a time while mixing until everything is combined.

Add in the whipping cream, mix well.

Fill the cream cheese filling to half-baked tarts. Then scoop your favourite jam on the top and make the swirling motion using a toothpick for marble effect.

Baked on 180C for 15 – 20 minutes or until the filling is set.

Let it chill before serving, the cheese custard texture will also harden up after refrigerated.

cheese-tart2
Still learning and experimenting on how to make a pretty marble pattern or heart pattern (still!)
Tips from me:

I think just like baked cheesecakes, better to leave the tarts cool to room temperature inside the oven after finish baking. Just let the oven door open very slightly and let the tarts sit inside until cool to avoid crack on the surfaces of cheese tarts.