Description

Steamed layer cake is a popular SouthEast Asian dessert that can be made in many flavors – Pandan and coconut, ube and coconut, mung bean and coconut to name a few. Today, I’ll be showing you how to make pandan and mung bean flavor steamed layered cake. This steamed layered cake will have 9 layers! WOWZA. One of the most eye catching dessert but also a very time consuming one since it takes a lot of time to cook each layer. Very tedious...but worth the glory. There’s a lot of recipes for this dessert depending on what texture you want. So if you like a peel-able, thinner layers, chewy, bouncy, but also soft texture, then this recipe is for you.

Ingredients

PANDAN FLAVOR

• 1 cup pandan juice (1 cup water blend with 2 pandan leaf chopped)
• 2.5 cups coconut milk
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 cup tapioca flour
• 1/4 cup rice flour
• 1/3 cup arrowroot flour
• 1 tsp pandan extract

MUNG BEAN FLAVOR

• 1/3 cups mung bean soaked overnight
• 1 cupt water for cooking the mung bean
• 2.5 cupts coconut milk
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 cup tapioca flour
• 1/4 cup rice flour
• 1/3 cup arrowroot flour
• 1 tsp pandan extract
• yellow food coloring

MISC

• 9x3 inch round pan or 9x9 square pan
• 1 Tbsp Oil

Instructions

MUNG BEAN LAYER

1. In a pot add in the soaked mung beans and 1 cup of water. Let it come to a slight boil and then turn down the heat to slowly cook and steam the mung beans until they are soft. This should take about 15- 20 minutes. Then add it to a blender. Blend well. The mung bean puree should add up to 1 cup. If not, add water until it reaches 1 cup. Set aside.
2. In another pot add in the sugar, salt, and coconut milk. Let it cook just until the sugar and salt dissolves (It does not need to boil. It should take about 1-2 minutes only). Take off the heat. Then add in the mung bean puree and a little bit of yellow food coloring to make it a little bit more yellow. Set aside.
3. In a bowl add in the tapioca starch, arrowroot starch, and rice starch. Mix well. Then add in the wet ingredients and whisk until all the lumps are broken down. The batter is now ready.

PANDAN LAYER

1. In a blender, add in 1 cup of water and 2 pandan leaf chopped up. Blend well and then strain over a strainer to get rid of the pandan leaf. Reserve the pandan water and set aside.
2. In another pot add in the sugar, salt, and coconut milk. Let it cook just until the sugar and salt dissolves (It does not need to boil. It should take about 1-2 minutes only). Take off the heat. Then add in the pandan water and a 1 tsp of pandan extract. Set aside.
3. In a bowl add in the tapioca starch, arrowroot starch, and rice starch. Mix well. Then add in the wet ingredients and whisk until all the lumps are broken down. The batter is now ready.

STEAMING

1. Get your steamer ready. The water should be boiling before steaming.
2. Get your 9x3 inch round pan or 9x9 square pan and brush it with 1 tbsp of neutral oil. Place it in the steamer to warm up the pan for about 3-5 minutes or so.
3. Then add in the batter in this order. TOTAL steam time for the whole cake is around 1 hr and 30 minutes.
• 1 cup Pandan layer. Steam for 5-8 minutes.
• 1 1/4 cup mung bean layer. Steam for 10 minutes
• 1 cup pandan layer. Steam for 10-12 minutes
• 1 1/4 cup mung bean layer. Steam for 10-12 minutes
• 1 cup pandan layer. Steam for 10-12 minutes
• 1 1/4 cup mung bean layer. Steam for 10-15 minutes
• 1 cup pandan layer. Steam for 20 minutes

Once all the layers of cooked, turn off the heat and remove it out of the steamer. Let it cool for at least 5-6 hrs before cutting. Once cooled, flip the cake over. Wrap your knife in plastic wrap and cut the cake to your desire shape and size. And Enjoy!

source: C.Hawj Creations

Recipe Websites

Yummly

When you first enter Yummly's website you're presented with options for cuisine type, which may helpful to narrow down options for users who are browsing for meals to cook. The layout of each recipe is also very user freindly begginging with a picture, number of ingredients, and total time to make listed at the begginging of the page.

Delish

Rather organizing dishes by cuisine type, Delish organizes recipes by recommendation – from delish, other users, and recommendation for the season (ex. pumpkin spice recipes for fall). I think there are pros and cons to this method. I think users appreciate hearing from those who are more experienced wether that be professional foodies at Delish or just people who've made that dish before. However, I think it makes it more difficult for users who know what the are looking, to find the recipe they want. The lack of seearch bar on the home page, adds to that users difficulties.

Bon Appetit

Bon Appetit's site cleverly uses a double-collum and scroll features to showcase more recipes to their users. This makes it more likely a user will find what they're looking for without having to spend too much time on the site. The dish photos are also very visually appealing and cohesive. They all have vibrant colors and bright lighting, which contributes to the sites overall clean and unified look,

Non-Recipe Websites

Subtropic Studio

This digtial and AR design studio showcased their projects in a fast paced video on the landing page. I think this would be a cool to mimic this for the recipe page and play a video of somone baking the cake. I feel like it gives a nice introduction to the user before getting to the recipe.

Superlist

Superlist integrates a drag feature that moves with your curser. I think this would be a fun and interactive way to swtich from image of a recipe to the actual ingrediates, or maybe swipe between two images

The ocotopus

The Ocotopus, Ideo's design blog, has a very clean and structured organization, that I think is essential on recipe webpages. I think mimicing the collum style and blocking would be a successful feature to integrate into my own webapge.