Pandan Chiffon Cake

I have always loved chiffon cake, especially the pandan flavor. Pandan, also known as screwpine tree leaves (I just found out yesterday while looking for the leaves at a Thai supermarket in Chinatown) is widely used in South East Asian cooking, from rice to desserts. I do not have any cake pan so I was thinking maybe I can bake muffin sized pandan chiffon cake, bite sized for individuals, and also eliminates the need to cut the cake.

I tried googling for an easy, do-able recipe but most of the measurements are in grams and mls (Asia uses these measuring systems and I do not have the necessary tools to measure grams and ml). So, I wrote my own recipe. Yes, I was thinking, let's try it. I noticed that this cake uses a whole lot of eggs. And uses coconut milk instead of milk. Also needs cream of tartar (which I never even heard of). Luckily it can be substituted with lemon juice or white vinegar, which I have at home.

I came up with this recipe:

6 egg whites
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 cup sugar
=> Beat until fluffy

1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup canola oil
1 cup coconut milk
6 egg yolks
Pandan extract (I blended 6 leaves with 1 cup of water then strained them)
=> Beat

All ingredients were mixed. Batter was scooped into sprayed muffin pan and baked in preheated oven at 375F for 45 minutes.

If you have had pandan chiffon cake before, you will know that this is far off from chiffon cake, but the smell of pandan and coconut milk makes them irresistable! Most recipes call for cake flour but since I do not have it I just used all purpose flour.

Note: Cake flour can be replaced by all purpose flour. One cup all purpose flour minus 2 teaspoons and add 2 teaspoons baking powder may substitute for cake flour.