The Sugar Bar

Think it’s chocolate? Think again. Look harder. It’s actually a dark shade of purple.

What’s that? Yea I know. Don’t you raise your eyebrows at me! I haven’t gotten over that purple phase yet. Seriously, I’m gaga-fied by it. Utterly completely totally besotted with the shade and the vegetable that can produce such a hue by very natural and earthy means – the purple sweet spud aka purple yams aka beni imo 紫芋 aka okinawan purple sweet potatoes. Cheshire cat grin.

A dear friend of mine from Chiba felt some of my pain about a month or so ago when I struggled to find a cheap variety of these spuds here. I ranted so much I reckon I might have burnt her ears right off or if I exaggerate a little less, probably melted them down. She, being the nice girl that she always is (bless her heart), sent me 400g of beni imo fumatsu 紅芋粉末 (and via express EMS mail at that!). If you understand the matcha concept, you’ll get this. It’s simply purple sweet potatoes roasted and then ground into a fine powder or funmatsu. I believe there are grades to this just as matcha does and that will determine the vividness of colour of the powder and its cooked outcome. Mine was one of a dark mauve shade in its raw state and so the colour wasn’t as vivid as I hoped it would be. Neither did it look as stunning as Junko Fukuda’s in her cookbook but hey, I’m not complaining because it was still visibly purple!

This pound cake I thought was pretty snaz, not just in terms of colour, but in terms of flavour. The use of goma dare, commonly used over tofu salad as a dressing, was interesting. I quite worried that this cake would be way too savoury and it smelt like it would be as I was mixing everything up. I have a penchant for using exotic ingredients whenever I can because it just feels a little more risky and exciting. I know Mama Diva will dislike this right away because it probably tastes way too weird and non-traditional for her. It definitely needs some getting used to but the deep and rich roasted flavours (of white sesame seeds more so than sweet potatoes) really come through in this pound cake. A dark yet earthy and vegetal fragrance from the beni imo is also quite evident. The scent of beni imo powder strangely reminds me of dark cocoa (the texture and fluffy ‘jumpy’ nature of the powder itself resembles cocoa powder too!) and the altogether nutty creamy taste and textures from the white sesame sauce with roasted nuts make it quite an appetite-reviving bit of cake.

Yet again I’ve gone purple and although this is one simple loaf cake, it contains just an edge of the weird and wonderful. An interesting flavour combination and a bit of an eye-opener but rather delicious. And GARH it sure did take away from the frustration I was experiencing due to a college fudge up this morning. I’ve never looked upon my electric mixer and pantry cupboard more affectionately than I did today. What stress-relievers they are. Bake, and let’s hope for a better day.

Note: This cake DOES NOT MARBLE ON ITS OWN like other marble cake recipes. The two separate batters must be added together, given one quick circular stir then transferred to your greased loaf tin. The batter isn’t as agile or active as we’d expect it to be. Between soymilk and firm tofu, this would be the latter.

Beni Imo & Sesame Marble Pound Cake 紫芋芝麻大理石磅蛋糕
(Recipe from 我♥和風洋菓子 – Japanese Title: 和スイーツの本 by 福田淳子 Junko Fukuda )
Ingredients

60g unsalted butter, softened
40g white sesame sauce (goma dare)
50g caster sugar
2 eggs yolks
1 tbs vanilla extract
1 tbs milk

2 egg whites
50g caster sugar

10g cake flour, sifted
50g beni imo powder

50g cake flour, sifted
black & white sesame seeds, for garnishing

Preheat oven to 170d Celsius. Grease and flour a loaf tin.

In a large bowl, beat softened butter for about a minute. Add white sesame sauce (goma dare) and 50g caster sugar. Beat until it is creamy and lightens in colour.

Add an egg yolk one at a time, beating in between. Add vanilla and mix. Split the batter into 2 parts and add 1 tbs milk to one part of it. Mix to combine.

In a small bowl, combine 10g sifted cake flour with beni imo powder. Set aside.

Prepare egg whites: Using an electric mixer, beat egg whites until it starts to froth. Add half the amount of sugar (25g) and beat for a bit more. Add the rest of the sugar when it starts to whiten and continue to beat until egg whites begin to form soft glossy peaks.

Add 1/4 of beaten egg whites to the batter with milk. Whisk to combine. Add half of the beni imo flour mix and beat. Then add another 1/4 of egg whites to the mix and whisk. Finally, add the rest of the beni imo mix and whisk to combine.

In the bowl containing the batter without milk, do the same. Add 1/4 of egg whites to it and whisk. Then add 25g cake flour and whisk. Add the final 1/4 of egg whites, whisk followed by the remaining 25g cake flour.

Add this onto the beni imo batter. Using a spatula, very gently give it ONE circular stir to mix (and create that marbling). Pour into your prepared tin, smoothen the surface and place in preheated oven to bake for 35mins. Remove from oven thereafter when cooked, or when a skewer inserted comes out clean, and leave it to cool in the tin completely.

I am experiencing one mega-normous phase of purple. And right before that, I was on a seriously crazed obsessive hunt for murasaki imo 紫芋 or a substitute for it. We spent a little more on the real imported thing from Japan but they were so delicious we ate them steamed before I could figure out what I could use it for that would do it justice. The hunt for purple sweet potatoes went on forever (you might’ve noticed me wailing away about it on Twitter). For all that wailing, I very unexpectedly stumbled upon two large, stop. ‘large’ doesn’t even begin to cover it, but you get the idea. These two sweet potatoes were huge and they were PURPLE! In addition to that, they were on sale. It was like I’d shook hands with the Queen except I hadn’t, I’d merely scored a sad root vegetable which was utterly covered in dirt.

Of course I had many ideas for my sweet potatoes especially since they were rather difficult to find in this region for some reason. However, time has been a very strained factor in the past few weeks what with all the menu planning for birthday dinners, Christmas dinner, work, planning in-between shopping trips, meeting up with the best girl to find out more about her wedding plans, yada yada. Finding time to stay home and buzz around the kitchen (for my own leisure that is) has been a luxury I am ashamed to say I have not had. So I had to think up something fairly quick, straightforward, using few ingredients (I really wasn’t keen on running around the island searching for things and lugging them home like a sweaty Santa) yet delicious beyond words.

Ondeh ondeh is surely one of my favourite Malay or Nyonya sweets. They are fragrant and terribly easy to pop in your mouth. Of course therein lies the danger of ondeh ondeh, relegating it to the top of the Evil Charts (popcorn chicken, salted nuts, cheesy nachos, etc.). The original ondeh ondeh, or at least the one you find out in the shops, are coloured green from a bit of colouring and pandan juice (which is naturally a dark thick shade of green). If regular orange sweet potatoes are used with no additional food colouring, they turn out a nice shade of orange or sometimes a light pastel yellow. Whichever way they come, they’re always delicious. And why? A little bit of mochi mochi goodness on the outside flavoured with crunchy but juicy bits of grated fresh coconut, the flavour made a little more interesting with a touch of salt in the coconut, a chestnut-y flavour to the skin and a climactic burst of molten gula malacca or palm sugar which has such a taste and fragrance it’ll leave you reeling.

Convinced? A word of advise, don’t bother doing the ladylike thing and nibbling into it. Do away with all that table etiquette and Western niceties, dive in and use your fingers. With a nice expert flick of a wrist, toss it into your mouth and bite/chomp down determinedly on the ondeh ondeh ball. Experience the explosion of senses to the max.

This is a type of dish I’ve learnt where its recipe is sorta handed down from generation to generation, picked up from friends and family. As my mother says, there is really no recipe to things like this! Hence, I haven’t got an exact ondeh ondeh recipe. You kinda feel the dough and its consistency as you go along. The measurements here are a recording of my own ondeh ondeh. They are purely a GUIDE and how yours turns out will depend on the wetness of your sweet potatoes, etc. You can alter the amount of flour or water according to how soft (wet) or chewy and stretchy you like your ondeh ondeh skin to be.

Because this seems like a feel-it-up-yourself type of recipe, I’ve added pictures I took during the process of making the dough balls. So if you did feel like trying your hand at ondeh ondeh, you can compare what yours looks like to mine! Happy days in the kitchen y’all.

Ingredients

1 large purple sweet potato (420g mashed)
about 250g glutinous rice flour, sifted
2-3 tbs fresh pandan juice
enough warm water, for loosening dough (I used about 1 cup)
200g gula malacca (palm sugar)
freshly grated white coconut, no husks

A few things to note:
• I recommend using bare hands to combine and knead the dough so you can tell how wet or dry your dough is. If it is dry and difficult to combine into a ball, keep adding water but slowly and cautiously.
• dough that is too wet will result in a softer ondeh ondeh skin, meaning it’s less mochi mochi or chewy
• remove from boiling water once it floats to the top as the longer it stays dancing in the water after it is cooked, the softer and less firm it will be (sorta like ravioli – think al dente).
• if you are living in Singapore and like me, found it ridiculously difficult to find freshly grated coconut, you can find it at a coconut stall in Geylang Serai market. It’s at treasure trove of Asian vegetables, spices, preserved dried salted fish, local (and halal) butchers, etc. Or if you just wanna go DIY, instructions here. If you simply wanna do the touristy thing, go down and check out the range of bananas they’ve got: ranging from teeny weensy ones the size of a swollen thumb to humongasaurus-rex types slightly larger than my forearm!

Cut up gula melacca into small pieces and set aside for later.

Pound the pandan leaves

To prepare the pandan juice, you gotta do it the old school way. Get a huge bunch of pandan (or screwpine) leaves, give them a good wash and remove any sand or dirt that may be lingering near the roots and between the folds of its leaves. Snip off the ends which joins the bunch together then snip up the leaves into 2 inch pieces. In a pestle and mortar (if you use a food processor I won’t judge you), pound the leaves into as bitty as you can. You can do them in batches. When its pounched down well, remove from pestle and squeeze with your hands or in a muslin cloth to extract its dark green juices. This is what you’ll need to add to the ondeh dough.

Small batch ready to be squeezed for its juice

Use a muslin cloth if you’re worried about mess and have weak hands. If you’ve sensitive skin like me, the pandan juice might cause a mild itch. Set aside the juice for later.

Steam sweet potatoes (you may use the orange ones as well which would give you orange ondeh ondeh) in their skins. When cooked through, remove from the steamer and place in a large bowl. Peel off its skin and discard. Using a fork or potato masher, mash the potatoes until fine. Add a little warm water if your potatoes are rather dry and need the extra moisture to mash a little smoother.

Now add the sifted glutinous rice flour and pandan juice to the mix. Mix a little with a fork then using your hands, bring the dough together. Add water in the process to combine the dough if it is much too dry. My sweet potatoes were a dry sort and so I ended up using a little over a cup of warm water. How much you use will depend on the moistness of your sweet potatoes.

Form the dough into a ball and begin kneading. If it has a rather mouldable consistency and smooth to touch, you’re there.

Pull little pieces of dough and roll into 1 inch thick balls. Using your thumb or index finger, press down into the middle of the ball to form a hole. Be careful not to press all the way through. Place a little bit of gula malacca into the hole and pull up the sides of the dough to seal. Do not overfill them as this might cause the ondeh ondeh balls to explode when cooking. Roll the dough ball into a nice round and set aside. Repeat process until all the dough is used or you may keep leftover dough in the fridge for use the next day.

Bring a pot of water to the boil. Once the water is bubbling nicely, add your ondeh balls to the water and let it cook. It will start to dance in the water when it is nearly done. When it floats up to the surface, remove from the water straightaway. Place on a cold plate to cool slightly.

When you are waiting for the dough balls to cook, place grated coconut on a long flat dish. Add a pinch of salt and lightly toss it together to mix. When dough balls are cooked and cooled just slightly for about a minute, add them to the coconut and lightly toss about to coat them.

Then serve with additional grated coconut if you like. I place them on top of a pandan leaf which has been washed and patted dry to infuse a little more flavour into the ondeh ondeh on its last stretch before being devoured.

In Asia, we have a love affair for things chewy, stretchy, glutinous or as the Taiwanese describe it, QQ. Not surprisingly, Su-yin and I take much delight in things mochi so when she shared me some homemade mochi cakes (recipe here), I was hooked. And after patiently waiting for her recipe to be blogged, I decided it was imperative that I try my hand at making these QQ little treats too to satisfy my recurring cravings and the incessant need to gnaw. And because some things just come as BUY 1 GET 1 FREE, this recipe is flexible and allows you free reign to be fairly creative with your choice of ingredients.

It recently came to my attention that there was a Kansho Matsuri in Japan, translation: a Sweet Potato Festival; what goes on there I do not know so enlighten me if you do. Nonetheless, I think we can all agree that the Japanese are cute and meticulous with their food, and how dedicated they are to such a humble ingredient! My pessimistic soulmate Y (now sharing a dirty flat with his younger bro in Tokyo and hating it) will correct me, say I’m being ridiculous and declare all Japanese people mad. I wonder why we get along so well like maple syrup and pancakes. Call it coincidence, fate or whatevs, we are going through a similar sweet potato phase in my house and the little voice in my head was suggesting we go in the direction of baked sweet potatoes. But that on its own, although delicious with honey and coconut milk, is a tad boring and might not hold your attention for long.

I’ve used Japanese sweet potatoes here, purple-skinned and of the yellow flesh which has a lovely sweet, buttery and chestnut-like flavour. I thought this might be better for a mochi-based cake since the regular Western sweet potato (orange-fleshed) tends to be a lot wetter/watery and sometimes less sweet. And you know me, after the colour green (hence the matcha), I’m drawn to purple like a kiwi bird is to shiny things so purple-skinned spuds for the win!

A very basic and popular way of eating sweet potatoes is to steam them after washing, leave to cool a little and then break them in half to share and eat with friends and family. Some other ways it is served is to have it steamed, skinned, soaked in syrup and coconut milk – another type of sweet yam, the tapioca, is served this way in my country and is so delicious and fragrant you almost feel drugged on a couple of mouthfuls; or cooked in sweet soups, savoury soups, desserts, etc. The variations are countless. A favourite bakery of mine also makes these very light and delicate steamed white cakes – it’s like eating a cloud for goodness sake – and it has little bits of steamed sweet potatoes in it. You can say that’s probably what inspired these cakes.

We all know the health properties of matcha already, that it is vit C-packed and so forth so I won’t bother to expound on that. But of course, FYI, when subjected to high heat like when baking or scalded by boiling water, matcha loses all of its amazing properties. Therefore, a word of advice is to use regular cooking grade matcha for baked goods and save the real ceremony-grade stuff for drinking. With regards to sweet potatoes, you’ll be pleased to know that they are pretty resilient babies. They aren’t just vitamin-packed and easy to cook or scrummy in anything. Sweet potatoes are rich in dietary fibre and because they contain loads of anthocyanoside, is good for bringing down high blood pressure, effects of constipation and is apparently great for the skin (not surprised, its vit C eh!). Plus, they are cheap and great at staving off hunger.

So maybe what I’m trying to say here is that my main ingredients aren’t too naughty? Does that make my mochi cakes less sinful? You decide.

So how did these turn out?

Because the steamed sweet potatoes added a bit more moisture to the cake, I had to bake them a little bit longer. I was half tempted to let these cakes dry out more in the oven, seeing as I’m not used to baking with mochiko (rather than boiling/steaming/grilling) it. These cakes upon pulling apart looked like muffins, with a similar consistency and lovely fluffiness but it is thoroughly deceiving because the cake is stretchy, chewy and almost glistens with its glutinous content. Delicious, moist and very different to the regular cupcake/muffin (might take some getting used to for mochi virgins). That chewy bite, soft but with a little resistance, is also satisfying and slightly more-ish. The taste was pretty good and that surely is the work of evaporated milk but one thing I would never ever use again, and all of it going down the drain right now, is vanilla essence! I hate that stuff and do not know why there are still bottles of that stuff in my house.

The smell of it reeks and I might have used a tad too much for these cakes in my desperation for a teaspoon of vanilla. Mistake.

Vanilla essence fail. Ignore that, and these QQ mochi cakes are still rocking it.

Matcha & Sweet Potato Mochi Cakes
(Recipe adapted from Lemonpi, inspired by Suyin from BreadetButter)
Ingredients

225g mochiko (mochi flour)
85g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
about 1 1/2 cup of steamed kansho (Japanese sweet potatoes), cut into small pieces
175g caster sugar
187g evaporated/Carnation milk
2 eggs, at room temperature
3 tsp matcha
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract

Wash and gently scrub the sweet potatoes being careful not to scrub off its precious skin. If your potatoes are fairly large and bulbous, you might want to pierce a few holes on it with a fork before steaming. Bring some water to boil in a steamer. Steam potatoes until they are just cooked through and not too mushy. Let cool on a place and set aside for later. When it is cool to handle, cut them up into small cubes or pieces.

Preheat the oven to 175d Celsius. Grease a 12 cup muffin pan or line with muffin papers.

Sift the mochiko, baking powder and matcha together in a bowl.
In another bowl, whisk the sugar and eggs together with an electric mixer on high speed until light and fluffy.

Fold in melted butter, then the evaporated milk and vanilla. Fold in the flour mixture and the sweet potato pieces until just incorporated.

Pour cake mixture into muffin tin, filling it up to 3/4 full. Place in oven to bake for 20-25 mins. I found my muffins a little wet and baked it for another 5 mins. Cool on rack completely then store in an airtight container.