Light, silky, fluffy, and toasted with coconut flakes, this pandan chiffon cake with whipped cream frosting will melt in your mouth! Furthermore, this recipe does not use any artificial pandan flavorings; it uses pandan juice extract. You get to taste the true grassy vanilla flavor of the pandan leaves in this cake, so it’s the real deal!
I love to make chiffon cake especially when I like to have a light dessert. It is a mix between between a sponge cake and a butter cake. Sponge cakes contain no leavening agents and the rising of the cake comes from whipping the eggs whites. A butter cake contains butter or other types of oil with leavening agents. A chiffon cake uses fat, leavening agents such as baking soda and baking powder. Additionally, the egg whites are whippped into a meringue and then whisked or folded into an egg yolk and flour mixture.
Traditionally, chiffon cakes are baked with tube pans. The tube helps the batter to cling for the cake to rise. For this recipe, you will not need a tube pan and your chiffon cake will still be fluffy and delicious! I will guide you through the important steps that make a soft and light chiffon cake.
TIPS FOR MAKING PANDAN CHIFFON CAKE WITH WHIPPED CREAM FROSTING
Sifting dry ingredients
As a best practice, you should always sift your flour, especially if it has been sitting for quite some time in your pantry. For this cake, it is even more important to do so. By sifting your dry ingredients together (cake flour, baking powder, baking soda and sugar), they will evenly distribute and help your cake get that soft and fluffy texture.
Cleaning your whisk and mixing bowl
Another best practice is to make sure that your mixing bowl and whisk are clean and exempt from any trace of oil before you add your egg whites for the meringue. Egg whites that come into contact with oil will not form a nice stiff meringue. One way to ensure that your equipment is clean is to wipe your bowl and whisk with a bit of lemon juice or vinegar.
Beating the egg whites
Your meringue needs to form stiff peaks to ensure that your cake rises properly. To help with that, once the egg whites foam, you can add a bit of lemon juice or cream of tartar. Additionally, at that stage, slowly drizzle in 2 tablespoons of sugar. This will help the meringue to form and stiffen it. This step should take about 5 minutes.
Adding the dry ingredients to the egg yolk mixture
When adding the egg yolks, pandan extract, coconut oil and vanilla extract, whisk until it gets foamy before adding your dry ingredients mixture. You should slowly add your dry ingredients in order to have an evenly mixed batter and whisk until all is incorporated.
Mixing the meringue into the flour mixture
Traditionally, most bakers were taught to manually fold the meringue into the egg yolk flour mixture with a rubber spatula. However, a new method has been shown to be more effective: slowly adding the meringue with a large balloon whisk. If you are using a stand mixer, you can use the whisk attachment. Contrarily to popular beliefs, this will not make your chiffon cake collapse. Moreover, with the manual folding technique, there is a risk of losing air bubbles and distributing the meringue unevenly. I have done both methods and I have been truly satisfied with the whisking method. My chiffon cake actually rose higher and was lighter! I added one third of my meringue at a time into my wet batter and whisk it until it is incoporated before repeating those steps with the remaining meringue.
Baking the chiffon cake
You can expect your cake to deflate a little when it comes out of the oven. Another important step for your cake to not collapse is to invert the cake pan upside-down on a wire rack when cooling to room temperature. This will help the air bubbles to stay suspended and therefore, preventing them from collapsing. Once your cake has cooled, you can carefully run a pairing knife around the edge of the cake pan before removing the cake.
Whipped cream frosting
Your heavy whipping cream needs to be cold straight out from the fridge before whipping it. If you don’t have an icing spatula, you can frost the cake with a regular rubber spatula. What’s great about this cake is that you do not need to be a skilled cake decorator! The toasted coconut flakes will conceal any “frosting flaws”.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Do I have to use cake flour? Yes. It is a must to use cake flour to make a chiffon cake because of lesser gluten content and finer texture will result into a fluffy and silky cake.
Why did my chiffon cake collapse? There could be a few reasons why your chiffon cake collapsed. It could be that:
- Your meringue did not reach a stiff speak stage.
- The dry ingredients were not sifted.
- You added your dry ingredients mixture too quickly into the egg yolk mixture.
- The folding of the meringue into the flour mixture was not even.
- The cake pan was not inverted upside down when cooled.
Do you use food coloring? You can use green food coloring if you like to amp up the green color. I did not use it in mine and personally, I don’t find you need it if you use fresh pandan leaves to make your extract.
How to store this cake? Since this cake contains whipped cream, it is preferred to refrigerate up to 5 days.
Equipment
- Mixing bowl
- Sifter
- Stand mixer or hand mixer
- 8-inch cake pan
- Parchment paper
- Icing spatula
Ingredients
Cake dry ingredients
- 1 cup (120g) cake flour
- 1 tsp (6g) baking soda
- 1 tsp (4g) baking powder
- ½ cup (100g) white granulated sugar
- Pinch of salt
Cake wet ingredients
- 4 eggs yolks room temperature
- ⅓ cup + 4 tsp (100ml) pandan juice extract
- ⅓ cup (80ml) coconut oil melted
- 1 tsp (5ml) vanilla extract
For the meringue
- 4 egg whites room temperature
- 2 Tbsp (25g) white granulated sugar
- ½ tsp lemon juice
Cake frosting
- 1½ cup (360ml) heavy whipping cream
- ½ cup (65g) confectioners' sugar
- 1 tsp (5ml) vanilla extract
- ⅓ cup Toasted coconut flakes
Instructions
Making the chiffon cake
- Preheat the oven to 325°F. Line an 8-inch cake pan with parchment paper at the bottom and set aside.
- Combine all the dry ingredients together, mix, sift in a mixing bowl and set aside.
- In a clean mixing bowl using a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment on medium speed or hand mixer on high speed, beat egg whites until frothy. Add lemon juice. Slowly drizzle in sugar and continue to whisk until firm peaks form, about 5 minutes. Set the meringue aside.
- In a mixing bowl using a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment or hand mixer on medium speed, mix egg yolks, pandan juice, coconut oil and vanilla extract until frothy, about 30-45 seconds.
- Slowly add the dry ingredients mixture into the egg yolk mixture and mix until well combined. About 2 minutes.
- If using a stand mixer: Add ⅓ of the meringue into the egg yolk flour mixture and whisk until incorporated. Repeat for by adding ½ of the remaining meringue and again for the last portion of meringue.ORIf using hand mixer: Manually fold ⅓ of the meringue into the flour mixture until incorporated, with a rubber spatula. Repeat twice for the remaining egg whites. ORManually do the steps of using a stand mixer by using a balloon whisk.
- Pour batter into the lined cake pan and bake for 30-35 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Leave the cake into the pan for 10 minutes.
- Invert the cake pan upside down on a wire rack for 30 minutes to prevent deflation. Remove the chiffon cake from the pan.
Making the coconut frosting
- In a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment on medium high speed, whip coconut cream, confectioner’s sugar and vanilla extract until soft peaks forms. If necessary, refrigerate frosting for 30 minutes to firm up.
Frosting the cake
- Once the cake is cooled, add the coconut cream frosting and spread to even with an icing spatula. Garnish with coconut coconut flakes.
