I have never eaten a steamed Hakka glutinous rice cake , nor have I seen one before. It appears that this steamed rice cake, or 喜板 in Mandarin, is not so common in Singapore. But all of a sudden, every other blog that I visited over the past week, without fail, is making this rice cake, for either Qingming Festival, or simply as a tea-time snack! Now, this got me very curious over this little rice cake.
The basic 喜板 needs only plain flour, glutinous rice flour, sugar, water, cooking oil and a little yeast. Mix the ingredients together to form a dough. Grease your palms with cooking oil, divide and shape the dough into small round pieces. Rest the dough for about 30 minutes, then steam over medium heat for 12 minutes. The important thing to take note is: DO NOT lift the steamer cover immediately after steaming. Leave it for another 3 to 5 minutes before lifting the cover, to ensure that you will have a nice smooth rice cakes.
This rice cake recipe has added mashed pumpkin, which gives the rice cake a beautiful golden yellow colour. For nice colour contrast, I added a small piece of wolfberry on each rice cake.
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| Rice cakes, just before steaming |
I first saw this recipe over at 鲸鱼's blog, and original source from 小雨伞. Thanks to their generous sharing on their blogs, I get to learn to make this traditional rice cake. I brought some of these rice cakes for Qingming prayers today, and some more extras for my mother-in-law. She was pleasantly surprised that I know how to make these rice cakes :)
Ingredients:
(Makes about 23 pieces, 45g each)
250g plain flour
250g glutinous rice flour
150g fine sugar
6g instant dry yeast (I used 1 tsp yeast + 1/4 tsp baking powder)
200g mashed pumpkin
220ml water
40g cooking oil
Extra cooking oil to grease hands
Small handful of wolfberries, soaked in water to soften (to decorate the cakes)
Method:
1) Mix all ingredients together (except water and oil) in a mixing bowl. Gradually adds in water, follow by oil and knead into a smooth dough (I used a mixer, knead about 8 minutes).
2) Grease your palms with cooking oil. Divide dough into small pieces, about 45g each. Round each dough pieces and place them on greaseproof paper or lightly-greased banana leaves. Gently flatten each dough with your palm. Place a wolfberry on each rice cake.
3) Rest the rice cakes for about 30 minutes. Steam the rice cakes over medium heat for about 12 minutes. Leave the steamer cover on for another 3 to 5 minutes, before removing the rice cakes from the steamer.
Thanks to Edith for asking me about the texture of these little rice cakes (forgotten to mention about taste and texture earlier). Taste-wise, this rice cake is rather bland for me, just lightly sweeten. I can't really taste the pumpkin in the rice cake either. Maybe some fillings inside, like red bean paste, will enhance the taste (perhaps?) Now the texture. It is soft when you touch the rice cake, but rather chewy when you bite into one. But, the chewiness is not the same like the ang ku kueh, which is chewy and sticky. These rice cakes do not stick onto your teeth and gum. After one day, these rice cakes are still soft, but of course, it is nicer to eat if you warm them up lightly in a steamer.