Pandan Chiffon Onde Onde Cupcakes Recipe

If you like onde onde and pandan chiffon cake, you'll probably love my pandan chiffon onde onde cupcakes.

Onde onde is a popular traditional sticky rice cake dessert in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia (it's also called 'klepon' in Indonesia). It's made with a glutinous rice flour and pandan-based exterior, and a gula melaka (palm sugar) and grated coconut filling. The chewy, sweet treat is then rolled in more grated coconut.

In recent years, modern bakeries started to create onde onde cake in a nod to this old-timey dessert. These tasty cakes are usually made with a pandan sponge cake base, a gula melaka and coconut filling and a coconut frosting.

My version uses a pandan chiffon cake as its base, making it extra light and fluffy, but keeps that rich, flavourful onde onde filling and turns it into a topping.

You can also make the gula melaka coconut filling a day or two in advance if you want to split things up a bit. Same with the buttercream, but you'll need to cover it well and give it a good stir as it'll form a crust on top if it dries.

You can also watch me make this on YouTube:

Ready? Let's go.

(Makes 12 large cupcakes.)

Ingredients for Cupcakes:

4 egg whites
100g caster sugar

4 egg yolks
70g caster sugar
60ml vegetable oil
120ml full fat coconut milk
1 tsp pandan paste
120g self-raising flour

Ingredients for Filling:

150g gula melaka sugar, chopped
120ml full fat coconut milk
Pinch of salt
1 pandan leaf
125g desiccated coconut

Ingredients for Buttercream:

150g unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
300g icing sugar
1 tbsp milk
A few drops of pandan paste

To Finish

25g desiccated coconut

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 170°C and line a 12-hole muffin pan with large cupcake cases.

2. To make the cupcakes, whisk the egg whites in a large bowl until they form stiff peaks (like a meringue), and whisk the 100g caster sugar in until glossy.

3. In a separate large bowl, whisk the rest of the cupcake ingredients together. Fold in about 1/3 of your egg white mixture to loosen it up, then carefully fold in the rest of the egg whites, working gently.

4. Divide equally into your 12 cupcake cases, and bake for about 20 minutes, or until puffy and golden. Leave to cool completely.

5. Meanwhile, make your filling: add the gula melaka, coconut milk and salt into a small pan, and cook on a medium heat until the sugar has completely dissolved.

6. Remove the pandan leaf and add the desiccated coconut. Stir and cook for a further minute or two, until all the liquid has been absorbed. Leave the filling to cool completely, too.

7. To make the buttercream, whisk the butter until pale and fluffy. Whisk in the icing sugar, adding it in bit by bit, and then whisk in the milk.

8. Divide the buttercream into two bowls evenly, and whisk a few drops of pandan paste into one. Fill a piping bag fitted with a star tip with the pandan buttercream on one side and the plain buttercream on the other.

9. To assemble the cupcakes, Pipe a ring of buttercream around the outside of each cupcake. Divide the coconut filling into 12 parts, rolling each into a rough ball and popping in the centre of each cupcake. Flatten down the filling balls a little so it fills out the gaps between the cupcake and the buttercream around the outside.

10. Finish by sprinkling over a little more desiccated coconut.

Enjoy, and have fun.