Pandan cake

The cake shares many common ingredients with other cakes, such as flour, eggs, butter or margarine, and sugar.^[11] The cake's distinct ingredient is the pandan leaf, which gives the cake its iconic green colour.^[12] Occasionally, the cakes will contain ingredients with green food colouring to further emphasize the green hue^[13]. The cakes are not always made with the leaf juice, as they can be flavoured with Pandanus extract, in which case colouring is only added if a green hue is desired.^[14] Freshly squeezed juices from pandan leaves also give the cake a stronger aroma compared to pre-juiced essences.^[11]

The pandan cake common in Indonesia, the Netherlands, and Singapore is a soft sponge cake akin to the chiffon cake, made without any additional coating or frosting.^[15] Most pandan cakes will sport a brown outer crust.^[11] Many recipes also call for the Pandan cake to be cooled upside down,^[11][16] which is a technique often used with various chiffon cakes to prevent the cake from flattening out, giving it its fluffy structure.^[17]

In Southeast Asia, cake-making techniques were brought into the region through European colonization.^[18] Malaysia and Singapore were British possessions, whilst Indonesia was a Dutch colony.^[18] European colonists brought their cuisine along with them, with the most obvious impacts in bread, cake, and pastry-making techniques.^[18] The pandan plant is believed to be native to the Moluccas islands of Indonesia.^[19] The plant is now commonly found throughout Southeast Asia.^[19] In Southeast Asian cuisine, the pandan leaf is a favourite flavouring agent used to give off a pleasant aroma, and can be added to various dishes ranging from fragrant coconut rice, traditional cakes, to sweet desserts and drinks.^[6]

In 2017, CNN named the pandan cake as the national cake of Singapore and Malaysia.^[4] In Singapore pandan cake was popularised by one of the city's most popular bakeries, Bengawan Solo,^[15] a cake shop owned by a Singaporean citizen of Indonesian origin.^[20] Bengawan Solo and their pandan cakes are especially popular among tourists visiting Singapore, particularly those from Hong Kong and mainland China.^[21][22] Other bakeries that carry pandan cake in Singapore include Old Seng Choong.^[23] During the 2020 pandemic, there was increased social media interest in a rivalry between these two shops and their pandan cakes.^[23]

According to CNN Indonesia, this cake originated from Indonesia, which can be traced to the cake-making techniques of Dutch colonists in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia).^[20] The colonial Dutch and Indo peoples combined cake-making techniques from Europe with the available local ingredients like the pandan leaf as flavouring and colouring agents.^[6] However, the modern pandan chiffon cake can be more directly traced back to 20th century America.^[24]

This cake is also known as pandan cake in Dutch, and is quite popular in the Netherlands due to its historical link to Indonesia.^[6] Other than its use in chiffon pandan cake, pandan leaf is also used as green colouring and flavouring in the Dutch-Indonesian favourite pandan spekkoek or lapis legit (layered cake).^[25] In recent years, pandan has grown in popularity internationally, especially in the United States, where typical western dishes are now implementing pandan as a flavouring agent and garnish.^[21]

One of the main variations of pandan chiffon cake is the modern versus the traditional pandan chiffon cake.^[15] Bengawan Solo, a cake shop in Singapore, is well known for its traditional pandan chiffon cake and its distinctive pandan flavor.^[15] Bengawan Solo also makes cakes with chocolate and yuzu flavors, but these cakes do not still contain the same recipe as the original pandan flavor.^[15]

Within the Philippines, there is a smaller pandan chiffon cake, the buko pandan mamom.^[26] This smaller pandan contains coconut milk and pandan flavors.^[26] The recipe features dense and buttery textures, which are typical of Filipino cuisine.^[26]

In Vietnam, there is the bánh bò nướng, the honeycomb cake.^[27] This cake has coconut and pandan flavors in its recipe.^[27] Due to the tapioca starch in the recipe, there is a chewy texture, and the cake itself is completely different from a chiffon cake.^[27] When baked, the inside appears like the structure of a honeycomb.^[27]

• Mandarin: 香蘭蛋糕; xiānglán dàngāo
• Malaysian: kek pandan
• Indonesian: bolu pandan
• Dutch: pandan cake
• Khmer: Num Sleok Touy
• Vietnamese: Bánh pho sĩcode: vie promoted to code: vi , bánh lá dứacode: vie promoted to code: vi
• Cantonese: 班蘭蛋糕; baan1 laan4 daan6 gou1
• Sinhalese: පණ්ඩන් කේක්
• Thai: เค้กใบเตย khêk bı tey

• Kue bolu
• Coconut cake
• Ube cake
• Mango cake
• Mamón