Banana cake is usually a fast bread recipe that contains mashed ripe bananas. Banana cake is generally moist, sweet, bread like cake which usually utilizes baking soda as the leavening agent rather then yeast; however, there are a few banana cake recipes that happen to be traditional-style yeast breads.
It’s a good honor to have Madam Kwong of Madam Kwong’s Kitchen guest posting on Nyonya Food these days. Raised in Penang, Madam Kwong can be a retired Nyonya chef currently based in Australia. I have been a secret fan of Madam Kwongs Kitchen—her gorgeous blog with quite a few authentic and delicious Nyonya/Malaysian recipes. Please welcome Madam Kwong and her daughter Suz (the photographer) to Nyonya Food with her kuih benka or tapioca/cassava cake Recipe. Kuih Bengka is usually a incredibly delicious Nyonya kuih, one of my late grandmother’s specialties and also my personal favorite. Enjoy!
Firstly, I wish to thank Nyonya Food for inviting me to guest post in her amazing blog. I was so excited when she emailed me and am really honored. We share something in common, well, besides cooking, speaking the very same language or the love of food. We are both from our beautiful island of Penang, Malaysia. She wanted me to “cook up†a Nyonya dish. The option of Nyonya cooking is vast and hard but this recipe is very basic. Oh! She did hint she wanted a kuih. So, I whipped up Kuih Bengka. My daughter, the amateur photographer, Suz took the photos and soon enough ate most in the kuihs.
In the past where there was no electricity, Nyonyas utilized charcoal to bake Kuih Bengka (Cassava). The top with the kuih would become dark brown. These days, you can still get the same top crusty effect in a fan forced oven which is caused by the baking procedure. The kuih is light yellow in colour and has a sweetly scented coconut flavor. You are able to even bite into the grated coconut. I used the old fashion wooden coconut grater to grate the coconut in this recipe. Ahhh! Life is tough, knowing that you are able to purchase frozen grated coconut. This is an effortless recipe to make and hope you try it as well…
When I was a teenager, my sister-in-law taught me how to produce chiffon cake. I love chiffon cake of all kinds—pandan, orange, or coffee, but my true adore is surely pandan chiffon cake. Pandan leaf (screwpine leaf) is widely utilised in Malaysia, and this chiffon cake is infused with the sweet fragrance of fresh pandan juice. In the event you adore Angel cake, you absolutely need to try this out. It’s truly superior! Please welcome my contributor Siew Loon back here. Enjoy!
Contributor: Ho Siew Loon
This is really a cake that I would really crave for, Pandan Chiffon Cake! It can be my all time favorite and I can actually indulge in it at any time of the day. After a long break I manage to bake myself a lovely Pandan Chiffon Cake and I thought it would be wonderful to share it with my Nyonya Food readers…
Pandan Chiffon Cake is the Asian version of Angel Cake and it has a really soft cottony texture that would really melts in your mouth. This cake is light unlike the traditional cakes where lots of butter, cheese, etc. is being used. It is really a delicious, easy and simple to create cake. It makes a incredibly impressive dessert and I usually serve it with vanilla ice cream.
June 14th, 2010 | Malaysian Food, Malaysian Recipes | 20 Comments
Whenever I go home to Malaysia, I would always stuff myself crazy with all sorts of kuih (local sweet or savory cake). One of my favorite is or kuih, or yam cake made of yam (in the US, yam is referred as taro). I have never attempted making kuih in the US though. Today, I have invited a fellow Penangite Su-Yin Koay of Bread et Butter to share the savory and mouthwatering or kuih Recipe. Bread et Butter is a beautiful blog with many recipes: Malaysian, Chinese, baking, and all sorts of goodies. You can also find culture guide articles bout Malaysia, Penang, etc. Please welcome Bread et Butter to Rasa Malaysia and do visit her wonderful food blog. Now I could only wish that I have some or kuih for my tea break today!
I was very excited when Bee asked me if I would like to write a guest post for her blog–I mean, this was Rasa Malaysia, one of my favourite food blogs out there! She’s taught me so much about Malaysian and Chinese cooking, and it is truly an honour to have a chance to do this.
One of the things I’ve always enjoyed eating is yam cake (“or kuih” in Hokkien, where “or” = yam, “kuih” = snack or cake). It is a popular snack amongst the Malaysian and Singaporean communities, and is basically a steamed kuih made from yam pieces, dried prawns and rice flour. It is then topped with deep fried shallots, spring onions, chillis and dried prawns, and usually served with a chilli dipping sauce.
I grew up eating my grandma’s or kuih, and I remember thinking how it would be so cool if I knew how to make it. However I would always be at school when she made or kuih, so I never really learnt how it was made. And if I were being perfectly honest, I was only really interested in eating it€¦ it also didn’t help that there was always a ready supply of it.
Of course, this changed when I came to England. I have yet to find a restaurant here that serves decent or kuih, which is highly disappointing. So I decided to ask my grandma for her or kuih recipe so I could have a go at making it myself. And you know what – I don’t know why I never tried making this before, because it is actually pretty simple! Sure, there’s a bit of prep work involved in dicing the yam, but apart from that it’s quite a breeze.
The best part of her recipe is that it uses rice bowls as a measure. How brilliant is that? The ratio that™s used is 2 bowls water: 1 bowl flour: 1½ bowls yam. Of course, this means nothing is perfectly accurate in terms of weight, but some degree of variation actually doesn’t alter the final product too much. It also does not matter what size your bowl is, as long as it’s a Chinese style rice bowl (i.e. not a wide and shallow cereal bowl, for instance). Just follow the 2:1:1½ ratio and you’re sorted.
For the kuih:
• 1½ bowls yam, diced into 1-2cm cubes
• 1 bowl rice flour
• 2 tablespoons wheat starch*
• 2 bowls water
• ½ – ¾ bowl dried shrimps (heh bee) – I used ¾ bowl because I cannot express how much I love an abundance of it in or kuih
• 5 shallots, finely chopped
• 1 teaspoon five spice powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon white pepper
For the topping:
• deep fried shallots (I buy mine ready fried from Chinatown)
• spring onions, sliced finely
• red chillies, sliced finely
• dried shrimps (heh bee), chopped finely and fried (optional – you can just put more heh bee in the actual cake)
Method:
1. Heat a pan over medium high heat, and fry the onions and dried shrimps until they become aromatic. This should take about 3-5 minutes.
2. Add the cubed yam to the pan, and fry it with the onion and dried shrimp mixture until it browns.
3. In a separate bowl, mix the rice flour, wheat starch and water, and stir until it forms a smooth paste. Take care to ensure there are no lumps in the mixture.
4. Add the flour mixture into the pan slowly, and stir until everything forms a thick paste.
5. Add the salt, pepper and five spice powder, and mix well.
6. Pour the mixture into a heatproof bowl/plate and steam over high heat for 45 minutes, or until cooked.
7. To serve, sprinkle with deep fried shallots, chopped spring onions, sliced chillies and chopped dried shrimp. Some chilli sauce on the side is also highly recommended.
* The wheat starch helps to make the or kuih softer in texture. If you can’t find this, you can substitute it with an equal quantity of corn starch.
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Place the flour in a medium bowl. Stir in the baking powder and salt and set aside.
Separate the egg yolks and the egg whites. In a medium bowl, beat the egg whites until frothy. Add the cream of tartar and beat briefly. Add 1/4 cup of sugar and beat for another minute (don’t let the egg whites stiffen). Add the egg yolks and the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar. Beat for about 2 more minutes. Stir in the almond extract.
Gradually add the flour mixture to the egg mixture, stirring. Mix thoroughly, but do not beat.
Pour the batter into the cake pan. Bring the water in the wok to a high boil, then turn down to medium. Steam the cake, covered, for 20 – 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool the cake on a rack. Invert onto a plate and remove the parchment paper. Invert onto another plate so that the cake is right side up. Cut into squares.
Sponge Cake Recipe Copyright 2003 by Rhonda Parkinson. All rights reserved.
Never steamed a cake before? Here are photo instructions on how to steam Chinese Sponge Cake
Steamed Sponge Cake With Coconut Icing
The Sponge Cake recipe has an average rating of 3.7, based on 3 reviews.
