Pandan leaves are widely used in Southeast Asia to flavour sweets and desserts. Most of our local kuih are cooked infused in pandan leaves. Pandan is also a popular flavour for cakes here. In Malaysia, apart from the common vanilla and chocolate flavoured cakes, you'll find pandan cakes as well in bakeries, markets and even commercial packed ones in the supermarkets. It's easy to plant pandan, just poke the entire plant with the root into the soil and it'll grow. They don't need much care. I have a pandan plant in my garden and it's very handy to have fresh pandan leaves off your garden when you need it for asian cuisine. I am thinking of planting more pandan since I use quite a lot of it in one go.
First off, lest I be
accused of stealing, let me make it clear that this recipe is not mine.
I'm merely following a fellow blogger's recipe. If you're interested in
the original material please visit Nasi Lemak Lover's blog.
I've said this before and I'll say it again, her blog is super awesome!
There are tons of recipes there and you'll most likely find something
you like to bake or cook on her blog. She updates her blog frequently
and her recipes never fail to inspire.
Today
we are baking a simple coconut chocolate butter cake. Experienced
bakers can literally do this with one eye closed. It's like
making marble cake but the vanilla goes on top and chocolate on the bottom instead of having swirls of chocolate in the vanilla.
For the three day long Merdeka (Independence Day) weekend I decided to make three types of Malaysian delight so we could enjoy a different taste of Malaysia each day in conjunction with the Merdeka celebration.
On the first day, I tried my hands at making my sis's and my favourite kuih, onde-onde. They use to sell onde-onde in a packet of four and I always find that there is not enough to share, not to mention the onde-onde sold outside are tiny and I always find that they don't use enough gula melaka (palm sugar) especially the crunchy bits, which I love, for the filling. Well, I guess that's just doing business, they have to lower cost by skimping on the good stuff.
