Green with Envy?

Screwpine leaves, or more commonly known as pandan leaves, is a widely used plant in Asian cooking, especially in Thai, Indonesian and Malaysian cuisine. A plant with a floral fragrance, it can be used in savoury dishes such as in curries or nasi lemak (coconut-flavoured rice). Of course, when blended with water, pandan leaves can be used as a natural food colouring, imparting a lovely green hue to cakes, puddings, sweets and jellies.

Pandan leaves are readily available here, and are sold in bunches of about 8 to 10 blades. Some families even grow their own pandan plant!

I always like to use pandan leaves to make chiffon cakes, because pandan chiffon cake is something which I grew up with. So when I learnt to make chiffon cakes, this is the first flavour I attempted. This time I made something different - Pandan Butter Cake.

Pandan Butter Cake

225g cake flour (or Top Flour)
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
85g unsalted butter, cut into pieces
180g sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup(240ml) nonfat unsweetened yogurt
30ml pandan juice*
¼ tsp pandan essence**

Some chopped nuts(optional)

1) Preheat oven to 180C and grease 8”x4” loaf tin (I'm using a bundt pan this time)
2) Sift together cake flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
3) Mix together yogurt, pandan juice and pandan essence.
4) Cream the butter for about 1 min to soften. Gradually sugar and beat until light and creamy. Dribble in eggs slowly, about 1 tbsp at a time, beating constantly for about 2 mins.
5) On LOW speed, beat in 1/3 of the flour mixture until just combined. Beat in ½ of the yogurt. Then beat in 1/2 of the remaining flour mixture, followed by the remaining yogurt. Finally beat in the remaining flour mixture. Fold in the nuts if using .
6) Pour the batter into the prepared tin.
7) Bake for about 35- 45 mins till skewer inserted comes out clean.
8) Cool in pan for 5 mins. Unmold and cool completely.

* Blend about 5 to 6 blades of pandan leaves with some water. Strain using a sieve to obtain juice.
** I used pandan essence as well to impart a deeper green colour to the cake. You can omit it, but the cake will have a very light green hue.

This is a moist and light butter cake, with a distinctive, but not overpowering, pandan flavour. A refreshing change from the usual chiffon cake.

This is my post for this week's Weekend Herb Blogging (though I'm not sure if I can submit in time). Nevertheless, this week WHB returns home to Kalyn's Kitchen, who is the founder of this blog event, which is into it's second year running. Please check out her kitchen for the re-cap of the posts on herbs, fruits, flowers etc submitted by food bloggers around the world!