Steamed Waterchestnut Cake

I bought quite a few cookbooks on Nyonya Delicacies, Local Kuehs and Dim Sum Making......but haven't actually had time to try it out. Most of the time, I'm so hooked up with the western type of baking. Recently, this mood of mine in making local delicacies came, I don't know how and why.....maybe because I'm quite baked-uop with all the western stuffs and it's time to change direction a bit to the local kuehs and yummy dim sums and white paos. I borrowed a cookbook from my MiL the other day and it's titled – "Pasar Malam Delights" by Chan Bee Sim, Philip Yoong and Alan Kok. It's interesting to see that there are a lot of local delights sold in Malaysia's pasar malam (night market). I don't much about KK pasar malam because I seldom go out at night........but when I'm in KL visiting my sisters, I like to follow them to the pasar malam at their housing district, and definitely you can find a lot of yummy good food there.

Flipping through this cookbook, I realised that a lot of the ingredients called for in this book are mainly the green peas flour , glutinous rice flour, coconut milk, tang ming flour, tapioca flour and rice flour. The reason is I think because most of the recipes are 'steamed' method instead of baking in the oven. I found one of the recipe in the book very suitable as these few months KK has been heated up quite badly, and everyone in the house is experiencing sore throat, flu and cough and feeling heatiness all over, its "Steamed Waterchestnut Cake"......and the best thing is you don't eat this cake when it's hot, but eat it cold.......it's very cooling and nice, even the kids don't really fancy kueh, but this one, they thought it was a pudding or agar-agar, and end up finishing it really fast J.......and MiL likes it too ^-^

Here's the recipe and try it out....it's simple and fast too.......Happy Steam Cake baking .
 

Steamed Waterchestnut Cake

Ingredients

450ml thick coconut milk ( I used the fresh coconut milk)

750ml water

100gm waterchestnut starch

25gm tapioca flour

25gm wheat starch / tang ming flour

200gm sugar

A dash of salt

250gm waterchestnuts, peeled and chopped to small pieces

Method

1. Put all ingredients (except the waterchestnuts) into a saucepan and stir to cook until it has thickened slightly. Be careful as it turned thick quite quickly once it's heated.
   
2. Remove from heat, add in chopped waterchestnuts and mix well.
   
3. Heat up a steamer separately and get ready to steam the cake.
   
4. Pour mixture into a 8" / 20cm round tray and steam at high heat for about 30-35 minutes or until cooked.
   
5. Remove and leave to cool. Chill in the fridge for 4 hours before cutting into pieces and serve cold.
   

Tip # 1: Just in case your water in the steamer is getting lesser and the cake is not cooked yet, add only boiling water into the steamer, not cold water , as this will fluctuate the temperature of the steamer and might affect the steaming of the cake.

Happy baking!