Pandan Coconut Sponge Cake (Pandan Powder)

A relatively healthier pandan coconut sponge cake from my previous recipe. I kept half the oil quantity  as coconut oil for aroma, and substituted the other half of the oil quantity by healthier rice bran oil 😃. The recipe also cut down the fine sugar quantity by 5g - though it was a small reduction 😉

To cut down on the trouble of having to prepare the fresh pandan juice/paste, I substituted it by pandan powder for colour, and a small young pandan leaf for flavour. Well, this substitution was enough to let me see and taste the pandan colour and flavour of the moist and velvety pandan sponge cake 💚💚💚😀

Cake Ingredients

All ingredients in room temperature
Using 52~55g Omega 6 eggs

20g organic coconut oil

18g rice bran oil/mild flavour vegetable oil

60g top/cake flour

1~2g pandan powder

30g low fat milk

10g honey

1g young fresh pandan leaf, chopped finely(add more for a stronger aroma)

3 egg yolks

3 egg whites
pinch of salt
20g fine sugar

20g raw sugar

Directions
1. Line an 6" round cake pan with parchment paper at the base. Need not grease the wall of the pan. Place a grid iron at the base of a 20cm square pan. Set aside.
I bought the grid iron from Daiso.

2. Combine low-fat milk, honey and chopped pandan leaf in a small glass. Set aside.

3. Warm coconut oil and rice bran oil till reaching about 75 to 80℃, remove from the heat source.

Pour in the top flour and pandan powder mixture, and mix with a spatula into a sticky paste.

4. Pour in the pandan-milk mixture from Step 2, and mix well.

5. Combine the yolks, one at a time, to the pandan batter till well combined. Set aside.

6.  Beat egg whites in a clean, dry and grease-free bowl, till frothy. Add in a pinch of salt, and first batch of the sugar mixture. Continue to beat the egg whites. Slowly add in the remaining sugar mixture in two batches. Stop beating after the meringue has achieved firm peak stage.

7. Transfer about 1/4 of the meringue to mix with the pandan batter from Step 5.

Pour the pandan batter back to mix with the remaining meringue.

8. Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan from Step 1.

Stand the cake pan over a grid iron rest in a 20cm square pan, filled with 2cm deep of hot water,

The grid iron is optional.

9. Preheat the oven to 160℃ for about 10 minutes. Bake at lower rack of a preheated convection oven, lower the temperature to 140℃ after closing the oven door, and bake for 55 minutes. 

Please adjust the oven temperature setting according to your oven requirement for baking a sponge cake.

10. Remove the cake from the oven. If you want to dry the cake after un-moulding, you may want to keep the oven door close to conserve the heat.

Drop the cake with the pan from a height of about 10 cm onto a kitchen towel thrice.
Let the cake cool down for about 20 minutes in the pan, or till the cake shrinks away from the wall of the pan.

When the cake starts to pull away from the wall of the pan, jiggle to loosen the cake,

and turn it out to a cooling rack.

You may want to dry the cake in a warm oven using the remnant heat for about 15 minutes.

11. Cut the cake after cooling down. Enjoys 😋