8 |STORY & FOOD STYLING YIP JIEYING PHOTOS EALBERT HOjuice” (no arti cial essences; he
recommends using “80g to 100g”
of pandan leaves per cake if you
want to make your own juice), a
discernible richness from coconut
milk, and a light and uffy texture
that still has some structure to it. He
adds: “It shouldn't be so weightless
and airy that it 'evaporates' or
crumbles to bits as you chew it.”
Mad About Pandan Cake
Pandan Chiffon Cake, $50 a 25cm cake
Order at least a week in advance via Instagram @mad_about_
pandan_cake, or e-mail [email protected].
This new home-
based bakery
boasts celeb fans
like Tay Ping Hui and Elvin Ng. And it
has nothing to do with the fact that the
baker, who prefers not to be named, is
the cousin of former actor James Lye. It’s
pretty expensive,
but each cake
is infused with
intense pandan
avour — about
30 leaves are
blitzed in a high-
end blender to
make pandan
juice for just one
cake, which is
also baked with
fresh coconut
milk. The baker, who came up with her own recipe,
remains tight-lipped about her techniques or speci c
ingredients. The large 25cm cake is soft and wobbly
with a thick crust, and extremely moist yet uffy: not
like your typical airy, drier chiffon cake. And each slice
is perfumed with heady pandan avour cranked to the
max — it is so concentrated that we, and a few of our
colleagues, opined that it tastes kinda like matcha with
a lightly tannic, bitter and leafy back note. Deliciously
rich, even though our cake was a tad under-baked and
too wet in the middle. We would gladly pay $50 for
it... provided it’s not under-baked. You’ll have to pick
up the cake from the baker’s house in the Bukit Timah
neighbourhood.THE CAKES8 DAYS | 49neighbourhood.Cheng's @ 27
Gula Melaka Chiffon Cake, $5 a slice; $40 a 23cm cake
27 YONG SIAK ST, S168654. TEL: 6223-7883. WWW.FACEBOOK.
COM/CHENGS-AT-NO-27-1693655154193499.
This may be called a Gula Melaka Chiffon Cake, but it's
essentially a superb pandan chiffon cake enhanced with
the deep, caramelly avour of gula melaka — both infused
into the batter itself, and some left as semi-solid bits which
form syrupy craters in the sponge. The cakes are lovingly
made by the Cheng family at their modern Hainanese zi char
restaurant in Tiong Bahru. There are no arti cial essences,
and only organic virgin coconut oil instead of regular oil is
used. The cake also contains freshly squeezed coconut milk
and a copious amount of cold-pressed pandan juice — this
extraction method using a pricey juicer which emits no heat
renders the aroma of the pandan more potent than usual.
Fantastic avour and moist, pillowy texture with a bit of heft.
It’s not cheap, but worth the price for its quality ingredients
and overall shiokness.