30-Minute Pandan Kaya

My family (especially hubby) absolutely loves kaya toast, but I simply hate the long, tedious process of slaving over the hot stove for more that an hour, just to produce a small bottle of pandan kaya. This method of making kaya was accidentally discovered in a moment of laziness and I have been making kaya this way ever since!

Ingredients

This recipe requires the use of a blender or food processor

 

250ml of fresh coconut milk, room temperature (I used pasteurised coconut milk)

10-15 pandan leaves

160g fine sugar (This produces a less-sweet kaya. Feel free to add more)

4 medium eggs, beaten (I used 60g eggs)

Method

First, wash and dry the pandan leaves and cut them into 1-inch pieces. In a food processor or blender, combine room temperature/warmed coconut milk and pandan leaves, blending until the pandan leaves are finely chopped. Strain the liquid using a muslin cloth. It is important to use room temperature/warmed coconut milk, as cold coconut milk is thicker and the fatty portion of the coconut milk will be strained out by the muslin cloth, resulting in a watery extract. Next, mix the beaten eggs and fine sugar with the pandan coconut milk and transfer to a non-stick pan.

Cook the mixture on medium heat, stirring constantly in the same method as you would when making scrambled eggs. It will take around 5 minutes to reach this stage. U will start to see a lot of clumps, as well as liquid separating from the mixture. This is NORMAL. Allow your mixture to boil and bubble, as long as it does not brown or burn.

Continue to cook the mixture until the liquid has reduced slightly to a maple syrup consistency (around 10-15 minutes total cooking time). Transfer to a mixing bowl. DO NOT strain out any liquid, as it is needed make your kaya smooth and creamy.

Now comes the magical moment when your green scrambled eggs will be transformed into smooth, thick, delicious kaya. Using an immersion blender (or a regular blender, if that's what you have), blend the kaya until it turns into a smooth paste. This step usually takes me about 3-5 minutes.

The final product. Stir to ensure that you did not miss any clumps.

Transfer into clean bottles while still warm. The mixture will thicken further as it cools.

Enjoy! =)

Happy Mother's Day!

Mother's Day always comes early for me ever since C started pre-school! Every year, her school will organise a Mother's Day bonding activity (usually baking) for mother and child on the Friday before the actual day. Unfortunately, C started having severe vomiting and fever the day before the event, so we had to give this year's activity a miss. C was so disappointed, she actually woke up at 7am that day, told me that she MUST go to school, and promptly fell back asleep from exhaustion.

Well, no reason for us to miss some bonding time just because she couldn't go to school! Since I was already on leave, we decided to try out Baking Taitai's Easy Blueberry Honey Cupcakes when she was feeling better in the afternoon. I'll say we had a better time that we would have had in school, and with a little modification, the recipe is perfectly suitable for a 3-year-old with a little baking experience!

C required some help from mummy during the folding stage to ensure that the cupcake batter does not get deflated. This is important as no leavening agents were added.

Ingredients

Makes 12 standard cupcakes

80g cake flour
2 medium eggs
40g organic raw honey (the consistency is scoop-able, making it very easy for a young child to work with. If you don't have it, regular honey will do.)
40g caster sugar (I used fine sugar)
30ml unflavoured oil (we used canola oil)
100g fresh blueberries, washed and dried

Recommended Oven Settings

190°C, middle rack, 15 minutes baking time or until the surface turns golden brown (ours were done in 10 minutes).

When working with a child, gather all the ingredients before beginning!

Step 1: Crack the eggs into a bowl and add in the sugar and honey.

Step 2: Beat the egg mixture on high with a hand mixer until it reaches ribbon stage. We skipped the bain-marie since I didn't want C to handle hot water and were still able to reach ribbon stage. Room temperature eggs are easier to work with than cold ones.

Step 3: Sieve the flour into the egg mixture in 3 additions, folding in the flour gently each time before adding more.
Step 4: Carefully fold the oil into the mixture until well combined.
Step 5: Fill each cupcake liner to half-full.

Step 6: Distribute the  blueberries evenly among the cupcakes, pressing lightly to help the blueberries sink into the batter.
Step 7: Into the oven they go! Our cupcakes were ready in 10 minutes.

Yummy and chiffon-like texture!

Our in-house food taster approves!

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On the morning of Mother's Day, I spent some time modifying a successful Japanese cotton cheesecake recipe into a mango cotton cheesecake for my own Mummy. Unfortunately, it failed terribly! The cake had absolutely no mango flavour and tasted a little like wholemeal pancake! The only consolation? It was still pretty photogenic.

2 lessons learnt: 1) Never try a new, untested recipe for a special occasion, and 2) Mangoes do not do well in baked recipes. Heat causes it to lose both fragrance and sweetness.

3 mummies smiling happily, oblivious of the gastronomic SHOCK awaiting us after the cake is cut.