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I love soba – especially in a salad form. I still haven’t quite got used to the hot soupy form of soba yet; preferring udon if it was going to be served hot in a soup. I remember the first time I purchased soba – thinking that it was udon. Uh. Yeah. In my defense, I was 18 and had no idea what was what. Thank god I had a Japanese roomate and she schooled me in the difference and how soba was really only popular in the summer (not too sure how true is this?).

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My go-to soba dish is probably not authentic but it is pretty darn tasty and dare I say a great use of soba. It is also a clever way of using up leftover roast beef – I concotted this dish as a starter once when bacon’s parents dropped by without notice for lunch and I wanted to serve a starter with our mains. They appreciated the cold roast beef more than the noodles; but I fell in love with this tangy, salty and sweet dish. Wonderful in summers; or when you just need a quick meal that just so happens to be bento friendly as well.

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Soba salad with edamame & roast beef strips

Cooked soba noodles, thoroughly rinsed in cold water to get rid of the starchy residue
thinly sliced leftover roast beef slices (or chicken)
cooked edamame (I chuck mine in towards the end of the soba cooking time)

dressing
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup rice vineger
1 tbs mirin
1 tsp sugar

garnish
toasted sesame seeds
nanami togarashi (japanese mixed pepper powder)

Instructions? Mix it all up!! Yes, it really is that easy. Not only is it simple, it keeps well cold and room temperature too, making this a perfect SPEEDY bento dish. I take mine out of the fridge in the morning before I leave for work and then just leave it on my desk until lunchtime. I hate it straight-from-the-fridge cold, so this is perfect for me.

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In my bento I included some pickles as well to eat with my noodles – the pickles enhances the flavours of the noodles. Two carrot flower sticks, a brocolli and some oranges completes the bento. I love the colours in this one; purple, yellow, orange – and most importantly, all the colorful flavours blends well with each other. I did not realize how fragant this is as well – people could smell the wonderful intermingling of rice vineger and soy sauce with mirin when I opened it up during lunch time. In a good way of course – not like when I decided to bring kimchi jjigae for lunch. heh.

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Okay, have I got the most AMAZING banana-bread recipe for you or what? I am a big fan of banana bread, and had spent ages seeking for the best banana bread recipe ever. Following normal recipes and tweaking a variety of recipes did not seem to work, but this recipe not only works, is is the perfect level of sweetness, super duper moist (sticky, even) and as light as marshmallow. I have been baking quite alot recently, but not many of my tweaked and adapted recipes turn out well…..regularly stuck with two giant loaves of hardened flour. After weeks and months of frustration, I am so stoked to be sharing a recipe here at long last – at last, no more baking #fail!

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Super-moist Banana Bread
adapted from The Hummingbird Bakery Book

to cream
250g brown sugar
2 eggs

to sieve
1 tsp baking powder + 1 tsp bicarb soda
1.5 tsp ground cinnamon
1.5 tsp ground ginger

to add
1.5 tsp essence of madagascan vanilla/scraping of 1 vanilla pod
300g mashed bananas
120g unsalted butter, melted

(this makes two 1lb loaves)

Preheat oven at 180C / 340F
Cream eggs and sugar until light and fluffy using an electric mixer.
Fold in mashed banana, you can whip this with the electric mixer.
Sieve in powdered ingredients in three batches, ensuring that it is all properly mixed in.
Add in melted butter and vanilla, and mix well.
Pour in lightly oiled loaf pans
Bake for 50 minutes – 1 hour or until the cake bounces back when depressed.
Leave cake to cool in tin for that crusty texture.
Slice, and serve with a good cuppa tea

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I have never been a massive fan of pickles, but bacon adores pickles. Pickles with cheese on crackers or sandwich, or with pork pies – anything really. The problem that I have with commercial pickles are that they are less of a pickle and more of a sauce. A commercial jar usually contains a small handful of fruits/vegs and more of the ‘sauce’. Maybe it’s part of the traditional culinary make-up of the country, but a watery pickle and cheddar cheese sandwich is an extremely popular choice for lunch.

Even thought I am not a fan of pickles, I think that pickles should really be more chunky rather than watery. It’s not ketchup, it’s a PICKLE. You would think that there needs to be more of the pickled medium rather than the pickling medium. So I have been doing some pickling for bacon, and this weekend was the turn of the farmhouse pickle. This is the pickle that is served with the ubiquitous British ploughman’s lunch – cheese, bread and pickles. It is sweet, savory and tart at the same time. The magic is in ensuring that the balance in taste and flavours are correct. And then the agonizing wait. As nice as the pickles is fresh from cooking, it is important to leave it for a month to develop and mature. The tartness stands out if eaten fresh from the pan, but if given time to develop and mature, it takes on a vastly different character of itself, almost developing an umami-like character.

Farmhouse Pickle (commercially sold as Branston’s Pickle)

to dice:
300g carrots
100g sweet gherkins
130g dried dates
300g courgettes/zuchinni (about 2 med. sized)
300g cauliflower (1/2 a medium head)
300g rutabaga/swede
150g cooking apples (1 large granny smith)
150g red onions (about 2 med. sized)

- 150g palm sugar (you can try muscavodo or other dark brown sugar)
- 300ml cider vineger
- 1-2 tsp liquid pectin
- 1.5 tsp allspice
- 0.5 tsp paprika
- 1 tsp powdered garlic
- pinch of salt

Start by sauteeing the onions, swede and carrot. Once soften, tip everything else in.

Bring this mixture to a rapid boil for 3 minutes, stirring constantly.

Leave to simmer for 1 hour…occasionally stirring and mixing pickles in the pot.

Wash and steralize new or used jars by washing in warm water. Place in a pan and leave in the oven at 120C for 15 minutes. I usually recycle used jam jars or get some pretty kliners/mason jars if they are for gifts. If you are using Kliners (or Ball Jars) please ensure that you do NOT steralize the rubber stopper in the oven. This WILL MELT.

Once the pickled mixture has softened, taste to check the level of saltiness and sweetness. Ignore the tartness, the vineger will mature with the pickle in a few weeks. Add more sugar/salt as needed.

To seal the recycled jars (hack-style), tighten the covers on the jars immediately. Place this in the oven on a baking tray, with hot water up to 1/2 the height of the jars. Turn the oven on at 150 for 20 minutes. This will suck out air from inside the jar, effectively sucking in the pop-up indicator on the jar.

Wait for a few weeks

Enjoy with cheese, crackers, sandwich…ect!!!

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This batch will be going out to bacon’s ‘two’ moms for Mother’s Day, plus a jar of my delish Caramelized Red Onion Chutney!

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When I was in high school, lunchtime would be only me and my mom as I finished school at 1.30pm. We mostly have leftovers from the night before, but very often she would send me to the local hawker stores (street food) to take away some chicken rice. As she did not speak cantonese, I was sent in to place the order. There are usually a variety of meats available , from the traditional ‘white’ chicken to char xiu and roasted duck. I only ever go for one. Without a doubt, I would always order the roasted chicken breast with extra chilli dipping sauce. Every single time. Even now. I drench my roast chicken breast with the sweet, tangy and spicy light chili sauce, which pairs up wonderfully with the rice cooked in chicken stock and lightly uplifted by a drizzle of soya sauce.

Living in the UK, Hainanese Chicken rice was one of the first item that was added to my repertoire. I have ordered it from a takeaway here before, but it does not even come anywhere near. And now that I’ve got the hang of it, I can make this from scratch under an hour, making it an easy enough weekday dinner when I feel a pang of homesickness, or just need to turn a whole chicken into something wonderful.

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Roasted Hainanese Chicken Rice
serves 4

1 whole chicken
4 inch ginger
1.5 tbs 5-spice powder
flaked sea salt
1 stalk spring onion
1 cucumber
soya sauce

Rice
3.5 cup jasmine rice
4 cup stock
1 inch ginger
2 pandanus leaves, tied in a knot
1 tbs butter

Soup
1 carrot
1 celery stalk
2 cabbage leaves
cracked white pepper

Chili sauce
2 inch ginger
1 clove garlic
2 chilli
splash of rice vineger
1/3 cup water
2 tbs sugar

1) Get prepared. Turn the kettle on (around 1.5l water); place the chicken and ginger in the pot. Chop up the veggies, put them in the pot with the chicken and pour the boiling water in until it just covers the chicken. Let it boil rapidly for 10 minutes, skimming surface scum. You want a light stock, but the veggies can continue to simmer after you’ve removed the chicken.

2) Meanwhile, place all the ingredients for the chilli sauce in a food processor, and whiz away. Bear in mind that chillies vary in amount of heat, so please ensure you keep tasting it to ensure that it is to your taste. If it is too spicy, add sugar/water. Preheat the oven to 220 C.

3) Wash the rice, place the pandanus leaves and ginger. Slice some spring onions and cucumber

4) Take out the chicken, and plunge in ice cold water to stop cooking. Pat dry. Rub ginger slices on the skin, tucking in pieces between the chicken drumsticks, wings ect. Gently rub the 5-spice powder on the skin of the chicken, and sprinkle flaked sea salt all over the skin. This will crisp up the chicken. Pop in oven.

5) Scoop in 4 cups of the chicken soup in the rice cooker (or pot) to cook the rice in. Turn it on to cook. When rice is cooked (roughly 20 mins) , rest covered for 5 minutes, and then stir in the butter. Replace cover.

6) Test the chicken for cook-ness after 40 minutes. Leave to sit for 5 minutes, before slicing it up.

7) Serve it up with rice topped with soya sauce and spring onion, cucumber on the side. Chilli sauce and the sliced chicken can be served family-styled or individually. Serve up the remaining chicken soup in individual bowls

Enjoy!!!

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PS: Traditionally, Hainanese Chicken Rice is just white chicken. You can do this by skipping the roasting part. Boil the chicken in the soup for 30 minutes, and plunge into ice cold water to tighten the skin up. Leave to rest, keeping warm before serving.

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Love it or hate it, Marmite divides the culinary world into half. I am an exception – I don’t mind marmite/vegemite, but I don’t yearn for it like some people. I’ll have it if it’s there, but would very rarely venture out and get myself a jar. Used in a cooking though, marmite takes on a completely different character completely.

I had previously made marmite ribs, which caramalised baby back ribs into a lip-smacking finger-lickin dish. Marmite chicken is a dish that is popular in Malaysia and Singapore in chinese ‘tai chou’ places – where families and friends usually orders a couple of dishes to share with their party with steamed white rice. I find that ‘tai chou’ chefs are an inventive and creative lot, I’ve had other odd dishes before like watermelon pork. Hmm.

The dish itself is fairly simple in composition; however the flavours are complex but light. Chicken pieces are usually deep-fried, and then tossed in a thick sauce made of marmite and honey. That’s it. But when you use marmite in cooking, it takes on a completely different character and loses its yeasty smell that puts so many people off. Paired with steamed white rice and a side of stirfried vegetables, this is a perfect weekday dinner whipped up in 30 minutes. I panfried my chicken instead of deep-frying, but that’s just because I ran out of oil .

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Marmite chicken serves 2

500g chicken, cut into bite-sized pieces
1/2 inch minced ginger
1 clove minced garlic
2 tbs marmite
1 tbs honey (more if you prefer it sweeter)
1/2 cup water
1 tsp toasted sesame

marinade
1 tbs cooking wine (shaoxing wine)
1 tbs light soy sauce
1 tsp marmite
1 tbs cornflour

1) Marinade the chicken for at least 1 hour. I usually do this overnight; just put it on the night before and it is ready to cook when I get home from work the next day. Deep fry or pan fry chicken until golden brown. Drain the oil and set chicken aside.

2) Fry the ginger and garlic in a little oil until fragant. Add the rest of the ingredients (except sesame), plus leftover marinade. Simmer until the sauce thickens, stirring constantly to ensure that the honey in the sauce does not cause it to burn to the pan. This should be a few minutes.

3) Add in chicken, completely coating it with the sauce. Sprinkle in sesame seeds. Serve up with a simple vegetable stirfry and freshly steamed white rice.

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Every month a bunch of us over at twitter pick a food item and cook/eat/shoot it together on a Monday. It is a whole load of fun to see all the excitingly delicious and creative use of inggredient – and I always make sure that I participate if I am around. I think I missed last month’s as I was laid in bed sick as a dog, but this month it was a source of inspiration.

I have been on a crazy spate of cooking and recipe-developing recently….I have no doubt that it will stop as soon as I no longer fit in my jeans – all this FOOD is not exactly good for the ole waistline!!!! Either that or I’ll be running out of inspiration pretty soon. Coupled with bacon being on a crazy cooking spree, we are in serious need to cut down ; so by the time you’ve read this, some of the ‘cookies’ had already winged their way to family & friends.

Whilst browsing the interweb last week, I came across the crazy notion of pizookie. Invented by a restaurant from Santa Ana, CA, BJ’s have been making pizookies addicts for a long time. It is essentially a cookie – shaped like a pizza!! I had certainly not heard of it before. I guess the boring description would be a deep dish cookie. They bake it into a flat ramekin that looks pretty big (5 inches across?) and it is served with ice cream. Mmmm….yummy, but the size is slightly too big to be a personal serving. Not quite personal pizza

I came up with my own take on the pizookie – I changed it slightly and it turned into a cakookie. Lols. Using a simple cake-like base, the cookie still has the chewy crispy cookie top, whilst in the middle it taste slightly like a chocolate chip cake. Mmm…I likey. I used smaller ramekins, not only because they were the only ones I had, but it was probably for the best portion-wise. The best part about this was? Leaving it overnight hardened the cakookie up wonderfully;taking on the lovely chewy texture of a traditional cookie. WoohoO! Just heat in the microwave for a minute, and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. And maybe a sprinkle of nuts. Or chocolate sauce. YUM.

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Cakookie

100g / 3.5 oz/ 0.8 stick of butter (room temperature)
100 g/ 1 cup plain flour, unsifted
1 egg
100g/ 1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 tbs baking soda/sodium bicarbonate
1/2 tsp vanilla essence

60g/ 2 oz chocolate chips
60g/ 2 oz pecans, chopped
6 pecans, whole

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Crank the oven up to 180-200C / 350-400F
Cream sugar and butter until pale (and yummy )
Add egg and vanilla and continue beating until well mixed
In batches, slowly add in the baking soda and flour, scraping the sides of the bowl as you go.
The batter should now be scoopable. There should be enough batter for 8 regular -sized ramekins. Do not overfill, you can fill up to 1/2 or 2/3 of the ramekins. Filling it up to 1/2 will allow enough headspace for a scoop of ice cream. mmm..

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Lately I seemed to be in a craze of cooking food from my childhood. Maybe it’s the Chinese New Year spirit reminding me of home, or maybe it’s just I really needed some low down comfort food because of the spate of grey weather we’ve been experiencing. Maybe its bacon. Whatever it is, this is another dish that I cooked upon his request. I have not made this in ages, but it is one of bacon’s most favourite dish. I very rarely cook this because I had only recently got a food processor – spending ages pounding and grinding it with a mortar and pestle. So lucky bacon!

It is again, another dish that goes well with nasi lemak. It is usually available in ‘pick-your-own’ food stores as well, from the chinese ‘chap farn’ to the mamak nasi kandar stores. It is more typical of being a side dish rather than the main dish; you can have this with curry chicken or perhaps rendang and a side of cucumber salad or stirfried veggies.

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Sambal telur – Egg coated in spicy tomato paste

1 large onions, cut in rings
2 cardammon pods
2 ripe tomatoes,deseeded and diced
2 tbs sugar (or to tasteI
1 tbs soy sauce
1/2 cup tamarind water (from 1 tsp tamarind paste, sieve out seeds)
handful of coriander

6-8 hard boiled eggs
oil to deep-fry

spice paste
1 inch prawn paste – toasted or use the paste-form
3 lemongrass, use only the white section
2 inch ginger
5 shallots
2 clove garlic
4 dried chillies – deseed and soaked in hot water

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1) Boil the eggs.

2) Chop & blitz all the paste ingredients in a food processor, adding a little oil to make it smoother

3) Peel the boiled eggs, and prick it all around with a fork. This is so the eggs do not crack or spit whilst deep frying. Heat oil up, and when it starts to develop a haze, drop the eggs in gently. Let it fry until golden brown. I sometimes skip the deep frying part, but the deep frying definately adds to the texture of the dish.

4) Meanwhile, toast the cardammon pods in a dry pan. Once the flavors starts to release, put in 1 tsp of oil, and sautee the onions. When the onions are soft and transparent, pour in the spice paste, and sautee until fragant. Add in all the other ingredients except the coriander, and simmer until it is pretty thick.

5) Taste the sauce, ensuring that it is sweet/salty/spicy enough. This is not supposed to be a fiery dish, more of a sweet,tart, slightly spicy and fresh flavour. Once the sauce is seasoned to taste, add in the fried eggs and completely coat the eggs with the sauce. Serve with nasi lemak or white rice, with a generous garnish of chopped coriander. You can do without, but I love my coriander .

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For me, Rendang is the curry that defines Malaysian food. Admittedly, it came from the Minangkabaus who migrated to Malaysia from Sumatra, it is now so widely recognised across the country that most people can probably not imagined life without it. Slowly simmered for hours to achieve the tender melt in the mouth texture, this is not for the faint hearted or impatient cook. It is also not something that is eaten on a day to day basis by the Minangkabaus, rather, it was reserved for celebrations or special occassions due to the long cooking time.

When I lived in Malaysia, I would have rendang at least once a week. Nasi Lemak (see my recipe here ) topped with a fried egg, sliced cucumber and rendang. I buy it on my way to work, get my parents to buy it for me, order it after a rough night out, have it for lunch – the list goes on. If nasi lemak is the go-to food for Malaysians, the rendang is the sauce that goes with it.

And now that I live here, I only get to have rendang on the occassions when bacon heads to Birmingham for work. It is usually drowning in oil, but beggars cannot be choosers….definately one of the worst rendang I’ve ever had, but I still ate it. When he was last down in Birmingham last week, he wanted to get rendang again, but I stopped him as I cannot stomach the more oil than meat ratio. He loves rendang and nasi lemak almost as much as me, so I promised him that I will make him some rendang as he was pouting at me for cutting short his rendang dreams.

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Beef Rendang
adapted from the ever-wonderful Rasa Malaysia

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2lbs stewing steak, cubed
1 tin coconut cream
1 cup tamarind water (from 2 tbs tamarind paste, sieve out seeds)
3 tbs palm sugar
100g kerisik (toasted dessicated coconut)
5 dried kaffir lime leaves
2 stalks lemongrass – crushed
cooking oil

dry-toast
6 star anise
3 cloves
8 cardammon pods
1 cinnamon stick (6 inch)

paste
5 stalks of lemongrass
8 shallots
3 inch ginger
5 cloves garlic
3 inch galangal
1 inch fresh tumeric (1 tsp powdered)
20 dried chillies, deseeded & soaked in hot water

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1) Chop the inggredients for the paste, and blend it in the food processor with 2tsp of oil.

2) Dry-toast the spices in a pan until it is fragant. Remove the spices, and place it into a heavy stewing pot. Using the same pan, toast some dessicated coconut, making sure to turn and toss often until it is a even nutty brown color.

3) In the stewing pot, heat up the toasted spices with 3 tsp of oil. Stir in spice paste, and sautee until fragant. Place beef in the pot, and brown evenly. Mix in the braised lemongrass, and cook for a further 5 minutes.

4) Once the beef and lemongrass is completely coated with the spice paste and starts to smell wonderful, pour in the rest of the ingredients. This would cover the beef and look something like a thin curry.

5) Now comes the hard part – let it simmer on low heat for 2-3 hours. The house would be premeated with the wonderful smells of from that boiling pot, but you MUST refrain from eating it! It is ready when it is nearly dry, the spice paste coating the beef pieces which should be melt-in-the-mouth.

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Serve up with a wamn serving of nasi lemak (or steamed white rice) immediately, and save the rest for the next day. The flavours only intensifies with age, and at this stage the beef is almost ‘preserved’ with the spices. It is thought that rendang was also a way to preserve beef back before refridgeration was available. I stored most of it in batches in my freezer, but it is supposed to keep without freezing for at least a week.

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Growing up in a typical Chinese family, dinners were always dishes with steamed white rice – eaten family styled. This is probably the norm for about 99% of the time. Even when we ate out as a family it was usually rice and dishes. When we would have hawker (or more precisely, street food) food for dinner, it would be something typically Malaysian Chinese consisting of noodles or another rice dish.

As a child, it was a treat to have anything that is out of the ‘Chinese food’ classification. I was regularly treated to KFC & McDonalds and the such; but what I loved most was the cheaper (and local) version of ‘Western food’. For the longest time I was under the impression that people who live in ‘western’ countries live on a diet of steaks, chicken chops, fish & chips, chicken maryland and ‘hawaiian fried rice’ . I think most people that grew up in Malaysia pre-90s did. It was a while before I realised that chicken maryland & chicken chop does not exactly exist anywhere else other than in Malaysia, and calling butter,pineapple & ham fried rice ‘Hawaiian’ is probably the ultimate insult to any self-respecting islander. Fish & chips made with crinkle cut fries and panko is totally different from the original english version that they shouldn’t even be called the same name .

One of my personal favourite is the chicken chop. A piece of panfried/deep fried boneless chicken thigh & leg smothered in a Hainanese-styled sauce served with peas and chips/wedges. Chinese of Hainanese descent were very popular hire as chefs and cooks back in the colonial days. They would pick up on the tastes of their employers and create their version of ‘western’ dishes. This includes the super delicious sauce seasoned with foreign ingredients like ketchup and Worcestershire sauce, mixed in with oyster sauce and soy sauce. Proper fusion back in 1920s . So nothing about it is typical, rather, it is more of a chinese intrepretation of what they think the British ate

The initial idea came from a friend, but as I did not have some of the ingredients, I basically butchered and chopped the recipe to suit my needs. And you know what? It is the most AMAZING chicken chop I have ever had in my life. Hands down.

Recipe for Hailam Chicken Chop

to marinade:
2 chicken dark meat segments – deboned
2 tbs Worcestershire sauce
2 tbs soya sauce (I used regular Kikkoman)
black pepper

- Pound the chicken to tenderise it ( I did not actually do this)
- Prick the chicken with a fork, and marinade it with the rest of the ingredients for a good couple of hours. I left mine overnight for maximum flavour penetration.

to fry:
1 egg, beaten
cornflour & pepper, to dredge

- Remove the chicken from the marinade, drip dry.
- Coat it in the beaten egg, and then dredge it the cornflour
- You can leave the cornflour out, or replace it with breadcrumbs. I just felt like a fried cornflour day
- Shallow panfry the chicken, skin-down. You can deep fry it if you like, but I am trying to cut down on my fried chicken consumption -I eat way too much fried chicken.
- After frying 5 minutes on each side, pop it on a baking tray skin-side up.
- This is going into the oven at 180C for the 30 mins it takes to cook the wedges

to make the wedges:
3 waxy potatoes, cut into wedges
salt + pepper
2 tbs olive oil
herbs,chilli and other seasonings.

- Mix it all up on a baking tray.
-Goes in the oven with the chicken for 30 minutes 180C

to make the sauce:
1 onion, cut into rings
3 cloves garlic, finely diced
1 stalk celery, diced (just because I had some in my fridge)
100g sliced button mushrooms (because I had some)
leftover marinade
2 tbs Worcestershire sauce
1 tbs Oyster sauce
1 tbs soy sauce
2 tbs ketchup
a splash of vineger
water

- Sautee garlic with butter, and brown onion rings.
- Add mushrooms & celery, and sautee until soft and lightly browned.
- Add seasonings, making sure to keep tasting and adjusting to taste.
- When you’re happy with the flavours, thin out with a little water combined with corn flour to thicken it. I did not actually do this as I had used the leftover beaten egg & cornflour from the chicken.

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At this point, the chicken and wedges should be done and ready, but make sure to test it by poking a fork through the thickest part of the chicken and ensuring no blood comes up to the surface.
Serve up with some peas and carrots seasoned with butter and pepper.

The frying-baking of the chicken turned the chicken skin ultra-crispy, whilst the day-long marination process ensured a juicy and well-seasoned chicken. I would have happily munched on the chicken just by itself, but the wonderful fusion sauce beautifully complemented the chicken. I scooped up the remainder of the sauce with the wedges, which crisped up in the oven and was just right. Two thumbs up, if I may say so myself!!

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We are now right in the middle of the 15 day Chinese New Year celebrations, and I am still not over with making goodies yet! I always remember the first week of CNY celebrations in Malaysia as being given unfettered access to the swingsets that are installed in most homes in Malaysia – I love just chilling out there, chatting and of course, eating!

Another one of my favourite Chinese New Year goodies (other than pineapple tarts , bah kwa and yee sang) is Kek Lapis, or Indonesian spiced layer cake. Made by slowly grilling each layer individually, this is a very expensive and back breaking process. The end result though, is so completely worth it.

Just look at this beauty…

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Pack full of butter, egg yolks and allspice, this is a super fragrant and rich cake. Eaten only around South East Asia , this cake is also known as speokkeok. Very similar to the german baumkuchen, the difference is that this cake is scoop-and-grill whilst the baumkuchen is pour and twirl. I halved my recipe as I did not have 20 egg yolks, but baked in the loaf tin, it came out very delicious . You may want to consider baking it in a square tin and doubling the ingredients.

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Indonesian Kek Lapis (adopted from RasaMalaysia‘s recipe)

6 oz butter (softened to room temperature)
2 Tbsp condensed milk
2 Tbsp evaporated milk (or just normal milk)
10 eggs yolks
2 oz icing sugar
1 oz superfine flour, sifted with
1 Tsp all spice
2 Tbsp brandy

Method :

1) Line the bottom of a loaf tin (circa 1l in volume) with greaseproof paper.
2) Beat butter (softened) with brandy, condensed milk and evaporated milk
3) Beat egg yolks until smooth, and add icing sugar and beat until pale.
4) Fold butter into the egg mixture, and sift in flour and allspice powder.
5) Turn on grill/broiler function on your oven.
6) Scoop batter into the pan, ensuring that it is measured because each layer needs to contain the same amount of batter. I use a 1/2 cup scoop.
7) Grill until the batter is golden brown and even. Poke any air bubbles with a fork – I didn’t do mine very well and had air bubbles in my final product.
Repeat steps 6-7 until the batter is finished.
9) Once the final layer have been grilled, turned the oven to bake at 180 C and bake for 15 minutes.

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