Fresh Pandan Pancakes Recipe

My fresh pandan pancakes recipe uses fresh pandan juice to create these super soft, fluffy, fragrant green pancakes.

Before you make your pandan juice, make sure you give your pandan leaves a good rinse with water and let them dry first. They're usually relatively clean when I buy them from my local Chinese supermarket, but the shape of them means a few bits of soil and grit inevitably get stuck at the base of the leaves – this is easily washed away under the tap, though.

Pandan juice is super easy to make: all you have to do is blitz up fresh pandan leaves with water in a blender, and squeeze the juice out through a muslin cloth. The resulting brightly coloured juice makes these pandan pancakes naturally green.

I make more pandan juice than is needed in this recipe because I find it easier to make a big batch of it. You can save any leftover pandan juice in the fridge and it'll keep nicely for 2–3 days.

I use my classic fluffiest pancakes ever recipe as a rough base for this pandan pancake recipe, bumping up the flour by just a tad and switching most of the milk for fresh pandan juice.

You can also watch me make this on my YouTube channel, Tashcakes:

Ready? Let's go.

(Makes about 14 pancakes.)

Ingredients for Pandan Juice:

100g fresh pandan leaves
200ml water

Ingredients for Pandan Pancakes:

125g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp caster sugar
Pinch of salt
1 egg
2 tbsp melted unsalted butter, cooled
30ml milk
100ml pandan juice

Method:

1. Cut the pandan leaves up (I use kitchen scissors) and blitz them in a blender with the water. I use pulse mode to make sure every last bit of leaf is whizzed up.

2. Place a sieve over a large bowl and line it with a muslin cloth. Tip the blended pandan leaves into the cloth, gather up the ends and squeeze out the juice through the sieve. Discard the tough leaves and wash the muslin cloth so you can use it again another time, and set the pandan juice aside.

3. To make the pancakes, put the flour, baking powder, caster sugar and salt into a mixing bowl, and give it all a little stir.

4. Crack in the egg and add the melted butter. Add the milk, and gradually stir in the pandan juice, working from the centre of the bowl outwards to avoid lumps. Let the pancake batter rest for 10 minutes if you want thicker pancakes to let the flour absorb the moisture.

5. Heat a saucepan on a medium heat and lightly oil with vegetable oil. Drop scoopfuls of the pancake batter into it, cook for two minutes or until the bubbles stop forming, flip them, and cook for another minute to a minute and a half. Stack up on a plate and repeat until all the batter is used up.

6. Serve while still warm, preferably with a little salted butter and a drizzle of honey.

Enjoy, and have fun.