Coconut Pandan Chiffon Cake/ Buko-Pandan Chiffon Cake

Today, I made dinner and baked a cake.  I invited my friend Eva for dinner and I introduced her to the world of terrariums.  She is now hooked and will be making terrariums too!  She's got a green thumb and she's got beautiful plants at her house.  But she didn't know anything about terrariums.  I surprised her with my new found hobby.  I lend her my terrarium book so she's going to start my hobby as soon as possible.  I'm just glad that she lives so close to me.  I've known her since high school and we've shared many happy/sad events in our lives.  At least once a week, we take turns cooking for each other. 


For those who are curious, Pandan (Screw Pines) is a very popular dessert flavor in the Southeast Asian countries.  Pandan is the vanilla flavor of the Southeast Asians.  It is sometimes used in cooking plain rice and it has a distinct aroma.  I can't really think of anything to describe it scent.  When using to extract it's flavor from its leaves, it gives the liquid a dark green color.  For baking, I just use a flavoring extract made by McCormicks from the Philippines.  I don't bother getting the leaves from the Asian store and manually extract the essence by boiling the leaves.  I might though someday.  I have a thing for cooking everything from scratch and no shortcuts :)  I have made my own tofu from scratch and I didn't do so well with it that I haven't done it again.  I make my own yogurt and I've been very successful with it because it's very simple.  I will have to blog about that at a later time.

Here's the cake I baked today....

Before putting icing.

      I used macapuno (coconut) slivers on top.

I love the green color of Pandan. 

I will make a purple cake next time.  My all time favorite Ube flavor.