Download pandan chiffon cake recipe

Ingredients
A Rare, Fragrant Food and Drink Ingredient
Tagged as the Vanilla of Asia
by Rico R. Magda
Owing to its unique and aromatic green
leaf extract, pandan has become a soughtafter ingredient as food and drink color
and flavoring. With any or some food
combined, pandan flavor and color
unmistakably make the appearance of a
particular dish for the asking. Aside from
its intrinsic value as culinary ingredient,
pandan has also some valuable medicinal
uses especially for sedentary urban
residents. With its wholesome flavor
and strong aroma, pandan enhances most
foods and drinks, particularly desserts
and savory dishes. Pandan extract is now
widely used as flavoring complement for
ice creams and chocolates. Meanwhile,
on the contrary, the same appetizing and
fragrant pandan leaves contain substances
that repel cockroaches. These substances
or essential oils according to test studies
discourage and repel both American and
German cockroaches.
Sweet-Smelling Pandan
Fragrant pandan (Pandanus amaryllifolius)
thrives in the tropic especially in Southeast
Asia, though it can be fetched fresh even
in California or Florida, USA. Pandan
leaves physically resemble gladiolus leaf,
which tapers narrowly to the pointed
tip. These leaves impart grassy fragrant
flavor and sometimes tied in knots and
are mixed in ordinary or sticky rice grains
during cooking preparation. For various
dessert preparations, chef extracts pandan
leaves with little amount of water by
pounding in mortar or with the use of
blender or mini-chopper. The resulting
aromatic extract has a striking green
color resembling that of wheat grass.
Pandan leaves can be woven into small
food containers or used a food wrappers
for grilling. In Malaysia and in the
Philippines, certain varieties of pandan
are dried, dyed, and woven into products
like mats, bags, fans, boxes, and slippers.
These products are popular and saleable
to tourists.
Before moving on to various culinary,
medicinal, and other uses of pandan,
here are some botanical descriptions of
the stuff. Pandanus belongs to the plant
kingdom, order pandanales and family
pandanaceae. Pandanus is included in
the screwpine genus, which is tagged as
pandan leaf used popularly as flavoring
spice in Asian cooking. The plant is
sterile and has a very rare flower. It
multiplies asexually through planting
the offshoots or pups attached to the
mother plant.
Photos: Magda
12
Genus Pandanus is a monocot having
about 600 classified species that vary
in sizes ranging from small shrub to a
medium-sized tree reaching 20 meters.
In the Philippines alone, 48 species of
Pandanus have been recorded thriving
in varying habitats from sandy beaches
to mangrove forests. Some species bear
edible fruits, which serve as food for rats,
bats, crabs, elephants, lizards among
others.
P. amaryllifolius is also called dwarf
or fragrant screwpine. This perennial
shrub is a native to Southeast Asia
and acclimatized to new tropical
environments. The leaves have very
strong aromatic fragrance used as
perfume or for flavoring food and drinks.
On the reverse, the same flavorful strong
scent works in shooing away some insect
pests like cockroaches.
A certain species of pandan, the fragrant
screwpine (Pandanus tectorius) is worth
mentioning here, which thrives in the
Indo-Malayan Polynesian regions even
reaching China and tropical Australia.
This species has the same qualities with
that of the fragrant P. amoryllifolius
though tectorius grows up to 5 meters
high and branching like a small tree.
Tectorius has many prop roots. Fragrant
dwarf pandan is sterile while tectorius
bears some yellow-red bright fruits rich in
provitamin A carotenoids and vitamin C.
Many names, same stuff
In various places where P. amaryllifolius
grows, the same stuff has also varying
names. In Bangladesh for instance, the
same aromatic plant is widely known
as ketaki. Another species also growing
in Bangladesh, the P. facicularis is
similarly used to enhance native dishes
like pulao, biryani, and payesh or sweet
coconut rice pudding. In Indonesia, it is
known as pandan wangi, soon-mhway in
Burma, Bai tooey in Thai cuisine, rampe
in Singhalese (Ceylon), schraubenpalme
in German, pandano in Italy, tokonoki in
food Marketing & Technology • August 2013
Ingredients
Japan, skrupalme in Danish, pandanuz in
Hungary, and la dua in Vietnam. Pandan
is available in either fresh or dried form,
in pasty extract, frozen leaves, and frozen
paste extract. They could be fetched in
Asian grocery stores or in some ethnic
outlets in places where the stuff does not
thrive. For Filipinos, Chinese, Sri Lankan,
Burmese, Malaysian, Thai, Vietnamese,
Singaporean, Indonesian, there seems
to be no substitute for pandan as flavor
enhancer especially for rice dishes, cakes,
and sweetened drinks.
To impart flavor to food, cooks have
practical way of using the plant. To get
the herby grassy flavor, they tie pandan
leaves into knots, smash them a little to
ensure that the essential oil is released
and then added these to long-grained
and sticky aromatic rice. For desserts
like custards, puddings, and gelatin,
cooks extract the juice manually or
mechanically. For steam cooking, lining
the steamer trays with several fresh
pandan leaves can give much flavor to
foods. In India, a certain pandan extract
from flowers is distilled from other
species of pandanus. This extract is used
to flavor drinks and desserts. Other
pandanus species provide some materials
for making textiles, clothing, carrying
bags, fine mats, slippers, baskets, etc.
egg whites and icing sugar until soft.
From the bowl, add the content to the first
bowl and mix well. Then pour the batter
in the chiffon pan and bake at 170˚C for
40 minutes. When finished, remove the
cake from the oven and cool the pandan
cake in pan placed upside down.
Summer refreshment from pandan
A simple yet inexpensive but nourishing
drink from pandan leaf can be made as
refreshment especially during very hot
summer time. Here is the iced pandanlemon juice. For this drink we need 1
liter of drinking water, 2 tea bags, 1 cup
white or brown sugar, one or two pieces
of American lemon fruits or 4 pieces of
Philippine lemon (calamansi), and 5 to
10 pieces of pandan leaves. Here’s how
to prepare it. In a liter of drinking water,
boil pandan leaves for 10 minutes. When
boiling point is reached, put the tea bags
and let it boil for 3 minutes. Then cool
down. Then add the lemon or calamansi
juice and mix well. Cool in a refrigerator
before serving, or serve with ice cubes.
The favorite buko-pandan salad
For the finishing touch, here is buko
(young coconut)-pandan salad that
always hits the center stage spot. For
making 6 to 8 servings, we need a two
3-ounce packages of unflavored gelatin or
agar, 8 pandan leaves tied in a simple knot
To make pandan leaf paste, cut the leaves
short about 1-inch pieces. Fill the pot with
one cup water and with as many leaf
pieces that will fit. Boil until the pieces
become soft enough. Then process both
water and the pandan pieces in food
processor or blender to produce paste.
Pandan chiffon cake
Many people are chiffon cakes lovers.
You can add pandan chiffon cake to your
collection of different chiffon cake recipes.
For the preparation of pandan chiffon
cake, you need a 17-cm chiffon cake mold,
40-ml salad oil (Canola), 80-ml coconut
milk, 70 g all-purpose flour, small pinch
of salt to taste, 1 tablespoon pandan paste
from fresh leaves, 200g egg white, and 70
g sugar powder (icing sugar). Now, you
are ready to bake the pandan cake. Start
by pre-heating the oven to 170˚C. Then
mix the oil, pandan paste, and coconut
milk in a mixing bowl. Add flour and
salt and mix well with hand whisk until
smooth enough. In a separate bowl, mix
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13
food Marketing & Technology
Key No. 80204
Natürliche und naturidentische Lebensmittelfarben
Ingredients
(pandanknots), 12 ounces nata de coco
(available at Philippine ethnic or Asian
stores), 16 ounces of frozen shredded
young coconut (buko), thawed and
drained, ½ cup creamy (Nestlé cream
or other cream brands), and 1/3 cup
condensed milk. Here’s how to prepare
this favorite salad. Prepare the gelatin
(agar) by dissolving in a pot of water with
added pandan leaves. Boil, stir constantly.
After a while, remove pandan leaves and
pour the mixture into two 8 by 8 glass
baking pans (other available containers
are possible). When the agar sets, cut
into ½-inch cubes. Then mix together the
agar cubes, nata de coco, young coconut
shreds, cream, and condensed milk in a
large salad bowl. Mix well. Serve chilled.
revealed that they are mainly terpenes,
sesquiterpene hydrocarbons (6-42%),
and a major aromatic component, the
2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (2AP), (Yoshihashi,
T., 2002), (McLeod and Pieris, 1982,
Phytochemistry, Vol. 21 (7), 1652-1657).
Repelling insects with pandan
Aside from the culinary uses of pandan,
it has some insecticidal properties and
practically used to repel some household
pests like cockroaches. One user says
that he has no idea of how and why
pandan works but he has been using
the leaf as repellant since he discovered
the repelling action of the stuff some 15
years ago while renting a house. He had
difficulty breathing whenever he used
chemical sprays until he discovered
the alternative pandan as cockroach
repellant. Reports have it that taxi drivers
in Singapore and Malaysia usually hang
bunches of pandan leaves in their taxis to
freshen air and at the same time to shoo
away invading cockroaches. Chemical
analysis of the volatiles in pandan leaf has
The aromatic components
of Pandan
Abbreviated as 2AP, 2-Acetyl-1-pyrroline,
with the IUPAC name 1-(3,4-dihydro2H-pyrrol-5-yl) ethanone, is an aroma
compound and flavor that gives white
bread, basmati rice, jasmine rice, and
pandan their characteristic smell. 2 AP is
formed and released when food is heated
like in baking bread. (S. Wongpornchai,
et al., J. Agric Food Chem 51 (2) 457-462).
2 AP’s molecular formula is C6H9NO.
Another flavor component is the presence
of ethyl formiate, which is found in rice
and pandan leaves. (Naturwissenschaften,
71, 215, 1984). When distilled, leaves also
yield some traces of essential oils, but
their roles as to contribution to pandan
flavor are still unclear. A study in Sri
Researchers have agreed to the preference
of having a natural, non-insecticidal ways
of eradicating cockroaches since synthetic
repellants produce some undesirable
effects to people and environment.
(Reynolds, 1989, Martindale, the Extra
Pharmacopoeia, London). Further
investigations on the potential of pandan
as source of scented natural cockroach
repellant for commercial use could be of
great value to users.
Lanka has identified the following
aromatic components in pandan having
concentration of less than 1 microgram per
kilogram (ppb): styrene, formylthiphene,
linalool, caryophyllene, β−farnesene,
dimethoxybenzene, and β−selinene.
(Phytochemistry, 21, 1653-1657, 1982).
Besides the culinary uses, pandan has also
many medicinal benefits. For instance,
in Vietnam, pandan is also known as
la dua, which is made into tea drink to
alleviate the threat of diabetes. There
are a growing number of VietnameseAmericans who have become prosperous
money-wise and now live in sedentary
style. Diabetes has become a growing
problem among them, and drinking the
stuff has helped them in reducing the
threat. As pandan leaf contains essential
oil, glycosides, alkaloids, tannins, etc.,
the plant is considered as diuretic and
helps in healing wounds and small pox.
It also acts as pain reliever for chest pain,
headache, earache, arthritis, etc. Chewing
pandan leaves helps in relieving painful
gums. Some folkloric uses of pandan
include prevention of spontaneous
abortion, root decoction in combination
with banana sap as urethral injections
for various urinary disorders. Mashed
pandan leaves, slightly salted with Citrus
microcarpa juice (calamansi) serve as hot
poultice for boils. In the anti-inflammatory
study using P. tectorius, extract from
aerial roots has produced about 34.5%
inhibition of carrageenin-induced edema.
On antibacterial properties, studies have
revealed the anti-bacterial action on B.
subtilis and Mycobacterium tuberculosis
H37Rv. (Journal of Natural Medicines,
April 2008, Vol. 62, Issue 2, pp 232-235).
Vanilla of the East
Once an Asian chef has written about
“pandan leaves are to vanilla what silk
is to cotton,” his twitter posting perhaps
needs further scrutiny. It is like enjoying
pandan in our food but never knowing it.
The chef refers to pandan aroma as vanillalike. Other descriptions of pandan flavor
include the adjectives roselike, almondy,
and milky sweet among others. Some,
however, are not in complete accord in
comparing pandan to vanilla in some
ways. While there are similarities, one
would not mistake the two that pandan
tastes differently from the other. While
pandan tastes grassy and very subtle,
14
food Marketing & Technology • August 2013
vanilla is not. Though similarities exist between the two,
no cook dares to substitute vanilla for pandan in cooking.
Perhaps, it is not the taste that really matters but the chef
refers to the mode of refinement. Just like saying that silk
is more refined than cotton, so as to say that pandan has
more refined taste than vanilla. As one taster said: “the
depth of flavor pandan adds to rice is just delicious, and I
can now appreciate comparing it to silk.”
Growing pandan
The fragrant pandan is a sterile tropical plant and is not
propagated by sexual means. So, to establish it, you need to
propagate it asexually by gathering the emerging offshoots
or pups attached to the base stem near the ground level.
Take these pups and soak them in clean water or preferably
in diluted agar or seaweed solution to boost roots before
planting. Pups are easy to grow since they already have
roots. Do not immerse the whole plant body but just leave
the leaves above the water level. If you leave the pups for
more days, more roots will develop in due time in them. But
do not allow them to over stay, or they will completely rot.
When roots are fully developed, plant the pups to a welldrained soil. Take care not to harvest leaves until plants
become established and mature. It is more portable if you
plant pandan in container pots if you stay in a non-tropical
area where weather situations become too extreme for the
plant. Occasional doses of seaweed solution will give the
plant vigor in producing more pups.
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Caring for the plant
Since pandan is a tropical plant, cold, frost or much wind
will harm or arrest its normal growth. If there is a winter
season or cold spell, take the plant indoor to protect it from
rain and wind. Many pandan plants die during this season
from crown rotting due to excess moisture. Water the
plant sparingly in the morning (not in the afternoon) and
expose it back to open when winter sun shines. In summer,
you can give pandan more water. Increase humidity by
misting. Do not expose the plant in direct, full sunlight but
rather keep them in filtered shade areas. You may shower
the plant with seaweed solution to initiate leaf formation.
Apply slow-release fertilizer.
Many pandan lovers have been trying to find more uses
for this wonderful spice plant. And some who were earlier
in their oriental homes and now residing in occidental
countries have been missing to savor the flavorful taste
of pandan. As one oriental resident in Holland says “It
is now the time to re-create the fragrance of the Orient in
the Occident.” And one writes these simple lines for his
appreciation of the fragrant pandan.
“Pandan…how wonderful thy flavor
Oh, how wonderful thy fragrance
We never cook our sweet soups without it We never
boil our sugar syrups without it
Life is simply bland without it.”
--Anonymous
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food Marketing & Technology • August 2013
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