Pandan Chiffons

Been missing Pandan cakes from S'pore, that's why I've been making them. They are impossible to find over here, even in Box Hill. I went into a Chinese cake shop to ask if they have any, but was met with a blank stare and ,"Would you like taro instead?" So I thought I'll make my own instead.

I've been wanting to try out chiffon cakes for the longest time... Chiffon cakes are daunting; they could sink like quick sand, becoming a dense kueh instead of a tall, fluffy, melt-in-your mouth cake. I really wanted to see if I could succeed in making one. Or two.

The first cake was... alright. It didn't rise up proud and tall, it stopped midway and sank a bit more during cooling. And I did not have a proper chiffon cake pan either, I used a normal cake pan. That chiffon cake pan is so hard to find! I've looked simply everywhere, and not a single store has it. I kept thinking how in S'pore, they were sold everywhere and I didn't even notice... T^T

Anyway. I deduced the problem was either the cake pan trouble, or I did not beat the egg whites enough. Here's the first cake:

It tastes like a chiffon cake, which my family was happy about. Soft and moist with pandan and coconut flavours complementing each other... But after an hour, the cake sank... I was so disappointed.

But I was ready to give it a second go. This time, I placed a tin can in the middle of the normal cake pan so the cake would have a hole in the middle, hahaha. The egg whites were also beaten a lot, to the point where I could left the bowl over my head and the egg whites still remained in the bowl. Very cool =P

It rose more than the first cake. but you can see it sinking in the middle already...

Compare the two:

Chiffon II

Chiffon I
Chiffon II is definitely taller than I, but why are both cakes still sinking?? I can't figure it out...

Oh well, until then, I'll just eat the cakes I've made. It's ultimate comfort food for me...

(Chiffon II)

Pandan Cheesecake & more Snowskins

Pandan frenzy! Seems like I am baking every weekend now, with the theme of pandan! Here is the Pandan cheesecake I baked last week:

See the green tinge? I have never heard of pandan flavoured cheesecake, but somehow my mum managed to persuade me to add it in anyway. The plate was emptied, so I guess pandan and cream cheese does go together? ^^;;

Will post the Pandan Chiffon cakes i baked tomorrow...

And I made more snowskin mooncakes today! I also made some with lotus paste, but didn't take any pictures of it. The lotus paste was what made me make more mooncakes! It caught my eye in one of the Asian grocery stores. It was $4.30 for a packet, and I managed to get 5 decent size balls.

Don't they look better than last time? Practice does make perfect!

This is the taro filling, it was so much easier to make than red bean! And tastier too. Just steam, add brown sugar and roll into balls. I also added some almond flakes. But wow, the taro was so expensive, $7.59 per kg!

But all in all it's so much cheaper to make it on our own, even though the fillings are a bit pricey. I bet they upped the prices because of mooncake season... A box of four mooncakes cost $10, and I made 16 mooncakes for less than $13. Yay~ Money saved. =DDDD Plus I really love the taro filling! I could eat it all day. And at least I know what goes into my mooncake, so I won't feel too guilty indulging myself.... hehehe.

Mooncake 月饼

Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节) falls on the 15th day of 8th month on the Lunar calendar, which is on 22nd of September this year! So we baked it practically a month early, because once Mooncake festival rolls around, I won't even have time to eat a mooncake, let alone make one, with my exams nearly coming up! *gulp*

It started with booming sales of mooncakes in Box Hill, where everywhere you walked mooncakes will pop up. But my mum saw this mooncake mould which cast all thoughts about buying mooncakes away.

"Why bother buying when we can make our own mooncakes?" She told me. Good question, why not try it out?

And we did. For the whole night, trying out recipes, haha. It was really fun, and we only had one disaster of a dough. The rest were sucesses! We made two types, snowskin and traditional baked.

Green Tea Snowskin Mooncake:

Pandan Baked Mooncake:

They look great don't they? When they first popped out of the mould after whacking it like crazy, it was perfect. Everything a mooncake should be.

The skin was too thick though, so next time we should roll it out more thinly.

The imprint is actually a lotus flower for lotus paste filling, but we made red bean filling instead.

Yummy mooncakes! But for flavours like durian, I would rather buy them because it's hard to get hold of fresh durian...