Misadventure 3 - Pudding Cake aka 砵仔糕

Hera, here again, for this misadventure, we'll be doing a Hong Kong favourite. Pudding cake is steamed glutinous rice cake prepared in a palm-size bowl.  It's sold now pretty much in any Chinese pastry stores or street hawkers.  Flavours can vary but generally brown sugar, white sugar, and variations of the two with filling such as red bean or coconut have been developed.   

from http://www.wangtu.com/pic_zixun/techan/o201010211604546316.jpg

This round we'll be making the traditional brown sugar, then a few with red bean, and the rest with coconut filling.  On with the show.  Take it away, BeaPea!

This time it's an all-girls show, and night of reminiscing... of high school! Dundundun. It will be Saki's first time joining us. I think we have already impressed her with our lack of knowing what we're making (BeaPea), can barely read the instructions (Guimauve) and don’t know how to convert the ingredients’ measurements (Hera).

Again, we found a old newspaper clipping of the recipe, no source again, sorries!  Another HK newspaper maybe Sing Tao?

We also don't know how many servings this recipe makes. We also forgot the camera and tablet to begin with. After fetching them from the basement, Saki promptly forgot where she put the camera. We are a good team. 

Hera: It's simple. 

Saki: Sure.

It's good to know we all have such faith in our abilities. Everything has been measured, approximately, 

and we're currently just waiting for the sugar to melt

Hera is about to pour the melted sugar into the dry ingredients. Drumroll please... 

"I will come and stir when [the solution] looks stable," says Saki, whose favourite thing to do is apparently to flick things into people's faces. Guimauve totally trusts her. Hera is very hurt by Saki's lack of trust in her ability to pour molten liquid. Saki smells chicken broth, maybe she's having a stroke. Hera is having a great time, though! 

 

Evidently there is discrepancy between the picture that came with the recipe and mixture. We are so far chalking this up to using different kind of sugar. Hera is trying to subtly hurry Saki's stirring by insisting she is not trying to hurry her. ‘It's our first try’ is how Guimauve is making sense of all this. 

Hera is also having a stroke according to Saki because she says our mixture smells like walnuts to her. Our mixture has neither chicken broth nor walnuts. Guimauve had a brilliant idea that they could share an ambulance. "Mmmmmm, good," says Hera in her baby voice. I think that's a good sign? 










Hera just said "and this part isn't in the recipe." Should we really be improvising? Apparently yes! We are adventurous folk, we ares. I believe this is the adding of the filling. 

These red bean has been pre-boiled for about 2 hours to soften them.

These red bean has been pre-boiled for about 2 hours to soften them.

This first batch shall be with coconut shreds. Saki wants one with 1.5 redbeans. How precise. Maybe she's secretly German. 

Coconut shred - slightly frozen because we forgot to thaw them.

First, pour them into ramekins.

Then spoon in desire filling.

 The cakes have been steaming for 10 minutes. "5 more minutes," says Hera.

Coconut!

Close up on the coconut!

mmmm....Red bean!

 

Tick, tock, tick, tock... They've been removed from the steamer. 

Now comes the answer to Hera's question 'what do we do now?' Next problem...how do we get these things out of the containers? Hera's dad suggested poking it with a stick and pulling it out. I suggested using a knife to scrape the sides and pat the bottom.

Looks like the knife on sides worked. Victory!

Final thoughts: The coconut ones don't seem to be firming up as well but we're taking them out now anyway. The verdict is... it tastes like sticky sugar. Guimauve would like a little more bounce in it, it's leaning a bit more towards the cake-y side of things. Consensus is that it should have maybe spent more time in the steamer. The second batch did, so we'll see if there is a difference. Apparently this one is a bit more watery because there was condensation dripping into it. Also the red beans are a bit hard. We may also have skimped on the flour. Third try is coconut and red bean. Hera is having trouble getting it out of the ramekin. The coconut one is a bit fluffier but it may have been the removal method, as it did not come out in one piece.  Still pretty successful, given we were making things up as we went along!

Recipe (Translation from article above):

100 g Rice Flour

½ Tbsp Glutinous Rice Flour

50 g Non-glutinous flour

120 g Raw Cane Sugar (we used the flat bar kind)

3 Tbsp red bean (pre-boiled to soften)

410 g water

1) Dissolve the sugar in 400 g of boiling water.

2) Mix all the flour together then add in remaining 10 g of water and mix well into a paste.

3) Add the sugar mixture in portions to the flour paste until everything is well incorporated.

4) Pour mixture into ramekins (or heat proof bowls).  In each bowl, spoon in red bean as desired.

5) Place ramekins in steamer, steam for 12 minutes or until firm.