班兰汁和班兰精华 Home-made Pandan Essence

小时候看姑姑做班兰蛋糕时榨取班兰汁的方法是把班兰叶剪短后盅烂，然后再用手用力挤出班兰汁, 一点水也没加。挤出来的班兰汁是深绿色的，滴滴是精华。

当然现在应该很少人用这种原始的方法了。我对班兰叶有点敏感，每次处理后手就会痒痒红红的，所以很少自己弄班兰汁，偶尔想念班兰口味就用市售的pandan paste代替，根本不到位。

这天妈妈带来好多新鲜的班兰叶，大概有三四把。我觉得如果就让它们干了坏了很可惜。于是就勤劳点弄了一罐班兰汁，收在冰箱里慢慢用。不是很确定新鲜班兰汁可以收多久，到现在大概一个多星期了还没变坏。

做法很简单，把班兰叶剪短然后加入搅拌机，加最小量的水（让搅拌机可以操作的份量就行了，这点视个别搅拌机的功能而定）把班兰叶打烂。如果要搅大量的班兰叶建议不要一次过加完，搅烂一部分后再一点一点加，水份也一样。最后把班兰汁过滤，最好是倒入布袋内用手像挤椰浆一样挤干。

把挤出的班兰汁静置冰箱内一天底部沉淀深绿色的部分就是班兰精华了。上面浅绿色的部分也很香，可以配搭班兰精华来使用。

Home-made Pandan Essence

Cut Pandan leaves (screwpine) into small pieces with scissors.

Put them into blender and add as little water as possible, just to allow the machine to puree the pandan leaves. If you are blending a lot of pandan leaves, add them bit-by-bit, same to the water amount.

Once done, sieve the mixture over a fine strainer and squeeze the pandan pulp to extract the juice as much as you can.

Store the juice in a clean container, let it sit in the fridge for at least one day.

You will notice the pandan juice will be separated into two parts. The green concentrated bottom is the pandan essence. This is the part which gives your bake the lovely green hue and intense pandan frangrance. As it is very precious, so use it with pandan juice (the clear light green part) to make up of the amount needed (usually 1-2 tbsp of pandan essence is good enough for an 8” pandan cake). Of course if you have plenty to spare, use it liberally as you like.