Turn pumpkin into cake
> This member of the squash family makes a delicious and nutritious steamed dessert
ONE DAY, at a morning market, I was drawn to a stall manned by an elderly lady. There was an array of colourful nyonya kuih, cakes, vegetarian fried noodles, and steamed yam cake.
She also sold steamed pumpkin cake, similar to yam cake but orangehued. I bought a few pieces and found the pumpkin cake to be tasty, with a sweetish tinge despite having dried shrimps among its ingredients.
I decided to try to reproduce this steamed pumpkin cake in my own kitchen after doing some online research to find the correct measurements and tweaking them a little.
The sweetness or saltiness of the final product can be adjusted to your own taste with just a few tweaks.
Instead of steaming the cake in a large pan, I also used smaller moulds or ramekins for individual portions.
STEAMED PUMPKIN CAKE
Ingredients Batter: 300g rice flour 1 tbsp cornflour 400ml water 1 tsp salt 1 tsp sugar
Other ingredients: 1 cup dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked and diced 5 cloves garlic, chopped 50g dried shrimps, soaked 2 tbsp cooking oil 1 tsp dark soy sauce 300g pumpkin, cubed 1 cup water and ¼ tsp salt
Garnish, according to preference: Spring onions, chopped Red chillies, chopped Fried shallots
Method 1. Mix the rice flour, cornflour, salt,
sugar and water in a bowl. 2. Mix the pumpkin, salt and water in a pot, bring to a boil and cook until the pumpkin disintegrates into a thick paste. 3. Add the pumpkin paste into the rice flour batter, stir to combine evenly. 4. Heat up cooking oil in a frying pan. When heated, saute garlic, dried shrimps and mushrooms until fragrant. Add in water and dark soy sauce. 5. Pour the mushroom and shrimp mixture into the batter. Stir to combine evenly. 6. Grease an 8in pan or equivalent,
pour in the mixture. 7. Steam over medium heat for one
hour. 8. When done, remove from steamer and leave to cool a little, before sprinkling the garnish on top. 9. Cut according to desired size and
shape to serve.