Pandan and Coconut Milk Layered Agar

The green and white color combination from pandan and coconut milk layered agar is a very common theme in many Indonesian desserts. With these two colors, you can keep it simple by making two layers as shown in this post, which I think is perfectly okay for midweek desserts. For special occasions, you can try making an elaborate multi layer version by alternating white and green layers like this puding lapis that will definitely impress any guest.

Pandan and Coconut Milk Layered Agar

Make fresh pandan extract

To start, you will need to hunt down some fresh pandan leaves, frozen ones are okay since this is what I use for this recipe. But if you can get your hand on some fresh leaves, use that! Here is the step-by-step to make fresh pandan extract:

1. Measure 50 gram of pandan leaves, use a pair of scissors to cut them into super thin strips, the thinner the better since the leaves are really fibrous and you don’t want to kill your blender pureeing them.
2. Put the cut pandan leaves and 1 cup of water into a blender and start pureeing until the leaves are completely pulverized. If you have a powerful blender like Vitamix, this will be done in seconds. If you have sub $20 blender, you need to be patient since it can take up to 10 minutes to fully pulverize the leaves.
3. Grab a strainer and squeeze out all the juice to get a natural pandan extract. I usually repeat this step twice to get a thick first press, and a second thinner press. For making agar, 2nd press is sufficient, but if you aim to use the extract for making cakes, then you really want to stick to using the 1st press.

Pandan and Coconut Milk Layered Agar

Use agar-agar powder

The most widely available brand of agar-agar powder in Indonesia is Swallow brand. If that is what you are using, be sure to select the clear (colorless) version.

The Swallow brand agar-agar powder is hard to come by in United States, in which case, you can try using Now Food agar powder, which is my go-to agar powder when I am in the US.

Pandan and Coconut Milk Layered Agar

Use pretty moulds

If you use pretty moulds, you can try un-mould the agar prior to serving. It gives off a more elegant and sophisticated feeling to this really humble dessert.

You can try using silicone muffin baking cups like this one from OXO if you want to serve your pandan and coconut milk agar unmoulded.

If unmoulding is not something you want to do, you can also pour into pretty glass jars and serve the agar without the need to unmould.