kuih lapis in cambridge.

a malaysian delicacy.

i have this dream to one day run my own kitchen. yumm.

anyways, to do that, i have to perfect as many dishes as possible. and seeing that i'm in obscure village cambridge, malaysian delicacies are way way rare. today, i tried to do a kuih lapis. kuih means cake/pastry/pudding. lapis means layers.

that's what it's supposed to look like. i haven't taken a picture of mine, but i'm afraid it doesn't look as perfect. i sorta went a little stingy on the colouring. felt too guilty.

anyways, if anyone is interested, the recipe thus far.

250ml coconut milk
screwpine/pandan leaves (usually 1, but its for flavour so it's up to you)
200g sugar
1/2 cup water
190g rice flour
20g cornstarch/tapioca flour
pinch of salt
food colouring (optional)

1. boil the coconut milk with the knotted leaves and sugar or until sugar dissolves.

2. mix the two flours with the water in a large bowl.

3. add in the coconut milk mixture to the flour and the pinch of salt.

4. stir until smooth, and then strain it to get rid of the leaves and lumps.

5. seperate the mixture into two bowls.

6. add colouring to one of the bowls. instead of colouring, which personally i absolutely detest, you can take the extra time to blend/mill the screwpine/pandan leaves with a teaspoon or so of water, and then strain it through a sift to get a green colour.

7. anyways, whatever way you choose to do it, you will end up with one bowl of white mixture, and one bowl of coloured mixture.

8. now put a baking tin/aluminium tin onto a steamer. or anything that works. i used some cake foil thing. improvising baby! and heat it up for 3 minutes.

9. if you're not using an electric steamer, like if you were boiling water and putting the baking tin on a stand over the boiling water, make sure the water is constantly at boiling temperature. otherwise the steam wouldn't come.

9. so after that 3 minutes, pour half a cup of the white mixture into the tin. if it doesn't cover the surface, pour a little more. it sould be about only a few mm thick.

10. cover for 5 minutes or until it sets. (sets like a piece of jelly)

11. then pour in the same amount of the coloured mixture and cover until it sets too.

12. keep doing this alternating layers thing. after the last layer sets, steam somemore for 15 minutes. opening the cover halfway to let steam excape.

13. then it's done! but, this is a kind of 'kuih' that has to be served cool. so let it cool down before serving. otherwise it will be mushy.

remember this isn't perfect yet. there will be modifications.

yumm!