Gula Melaka Pillow Cake

A small portion sponge cake in sweet gula melaka flavour baked in a small oven toaster. You would start to enjoy the sweet fragrance of the gula melaka midway while baking the cake 😊

Next, you would enjoy eating the soft texture cake with the sweet gula melaka aroma filling your palates 😋

INGREDIENTS
All ingredients in room temperature

Eggs weighing 55~56g each

[A]
10g unsalted butter

10g coconut oil

[B]
35g low-fat milk
15g granulated gula melaka/palm sugar 

1g young pandan leaf, chopped finely

[C]
30g top/cake flour 
2g corn starch

1g milk powder/corn starch

1/4 tsp pandan powder, optional

[D]
2 egg yolks

[E]
2 egg whites
Pinch of low-sodium salt
10g fine sugar
15g raw sugar/fine sugar
3g corn starch 

Pan size: 199x73x65mm paper cake pan

Directions

1. Warm [B] till gula melaka dissolved. Set aside.

2. Heat Ingredient A till reaching 75 to 80℃.

3. Mix [A] with [C] till no liquid oil can be seen.

4. Mix in [B] mixture from Step 1 into a thick and sticky paste.

5. Mix [D], one by one,  into a smooth paste. Let the yolk batter set aside.

6. In a clean, dry and oil-free mixing bowl, beat egg whites of [E] till frothy before adding low-sodium salt, followed by both sugars. 

Beat the meringue till reaching firm peak stage. Sprinkle corn starch over and mix using an electric mixer for a few seconds.

7. Take about 1/4 of meringue to mix with the yolk paste till smooth. 

Pour the mixture back to mix with the remaining meringue into a smooth batter.

8. Pour the batter into the cake pan and bang to get rid of air bubbles.

Place the paper cake pan over a shallow baking tray lined with about 2 to 3 layers of aluminum foil. This is to prevent the base of the cake from overbrowning due to long baking duration.

9. Bake at middle rack of a preheated oven toaster at 150C for 35 minutes, or till the cake starts to shrink in height.

10. Dropped the cake with pan thrice, invert over a cooling rack for about 1 hour. 

Cut and enjoy 😊

Pandan Milk Coconut Sponge Cake (Pandan Powder)

I did some adjustments to my previous recipe, Pandan Coconut Sponge Cake (pandan powder), to bake a similar cake with better browning to the crust. Without the brown caramelized crust, the cake would not be smelled as nice.

More fresh young pandan leaves have been added to enhance the pandan aroma. The pandan powder alone could not do the magic 🪄

If you hate the hassle of extracting pandan juice, and would like to have a healthier cake with lesser fine sugar and coconut product, you may want to try out this light pandan sponge cake recipe 😉😋

Video of preparation process:

🌿🥥🌿🥥🌿🥥🌿🥥

Cake Ingredients

All ingredients in room temperature
Using 55~56g eggs

20g coconut oil 
18g rice bran oil/vegetable oil 

60g top/cake flour 
2g pandan powder 

30g low-fat milk
4g young pandan leaves, chopped 
10g golden syrup/honey

 
3 egg yolks

3 egg whites
1/8 tsp low-sodium salt
20g fine sugar
20g raw sugar/fine sugar

Directions

1. Line an 6" round cake pan with parchment paper at the base. Need not grease the wall of the pan. .

2. Combine low-fat milk, golden syrup/honey, chopped pandan leaves 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 in a 20cm square pan, filled with 2cm deep of hot water,

9. Preheat the oven to 165℃, turning on only the upper heating coil, for about 10 minutes. 

Bake at middle rack of a preheated convection oven, at 165℃ for 15 minutes. Next, lower the temperature to 130℃, turn on both the upper and lower heating coils, and bake for 40 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 😋