Although the strawberry polvoron I made for the first round of #PASALUBONG treat boxes have a special place in my heart, I can make more space for these pandan polvoron! Polvoron are crumbly Filipino shortbread cookies that melt in your mouth (beware of choking if you don’t have a glass of milk or water nearby!). They’re delicious and a good alternative when you don’t want to use your oven. All you have to do is toast some flour over the stovetop and mix it with your other ingredients. It comes together rather quickly and after chilling them for an hour, they’re good to go.
The flavor of pandan gets concentrated with the use of both the actual screwpine leaves steeped in melted butter and an addition of pandan extract. Pandan tastes like a delicate combination of almond and vanilla. They’re used all over Southeast Asia in many a dessert. You might also remember the buko pandan salad I made that features pandan.
As with the strawberry polvoron, I didn’t have a polvoron molder but I bought these festive Ateco Christmas plunger cutters that had a Christmas tree design I loved. These cookies look adorable in the 🎄 shape! My biggest piece of advice with using these plunger cutters is not to pack the polvoron mixture too tightly into them. It tends to get stuck in the crevices of the molder. If that does happen, you can go ahead and clean it off and start the process of pressing out the shapes again.
Pandan Polvoron
Ingredients
- 2 ⅙ cups all-purpose flour
- 2/3 cup whole milk powder
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 ½ cups unsalted butter
- 4 pandan leaves, tied in knots
- 2 teaspoons pandan extract
Instructions
- Toast the flour in a large frying pan over low heat, stirring continuously with a rubber spatula until the flour changes color from white to light brown, approximately 10-12 min.
- Transfer the toasted flour to a mixing bowl. Add the rest of the dry ingredients and mix together. Set aside.
- Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat, steep pandan leaves while butter is melting.
- Remove the pandan leaves. Add the warm melted butter into the dry ingredients then mix until incorporated. Add pandan extract and mix.
- While the mixture is still warm, form desired polvoron shapes by packing the mixture (about 1 tablespoon each) into the polvoron molder or plunger cutter (Don’t press the mixture in too hard or it will get stuck in the mold!).
- Cool for at least 1 hour in the fridge or until firm.
