This is because I miss the taste of home and love to incorporate the food that I used to love into my day-to-day home-baking and cooking.
When I was a child, my grandma used to cook Bubur Pulut Hitam specially for me and I always to ask her to serve mine with the most coconut cream. I was such a lucky fatty girl! LOL!
Bubur Pulut Hitam is an all-time popular Malaysian / Singapore sweet black glutinous rice porridge that is served with coconut milk or cream as a warm or chilled dessert. Yummy!
I have seen many Bubur Pulut Hitam cake recipes created by Malaysian/ Singapore bloggers and tasted several Bubur Pulut Hitam cakes when I was in Singapore but none of them is what I wanted!
Am I too fussy? Actually, I just want a Bubur Pulut Hitam Chiffon Cake that is fully loaded with Bubur Pulut Hitam! That's all!
However, the recipes and cakes that I have seen and tasted are made with finely ground black glutinous rice flour. And there is no chewy Bubur Pulut Hitam bits and pieces that I would love to taste in my cakes.Hence, after several trial-and-error baking, I have managed to create this very soft and moist chiffon cake that was made with the maximal amount of Pulut Hitam and coconut fragrance! And I'm proud to say that this is my best Bubur Pulut Hitam Chiffon Cake recipe!
Proudly presenting my Very Soft and Moist Fully-Loaded Bubur Pulut Hitam Chiffon Cake
My Very Soft and Moist Fully-Loaded Bubur Pulut Hitam Chiffon Cake is made with:
1) the maximal amount of real Bubur Pulut Hitam dessert, not black glutinous rice flour.
I actually gave one large slice of my cake to my Singaporean colleague to try. He said that the cake is delicious but will be nice if there is MORE Bubur Pulut Hitam! I tried to explain that this is actually the MAX amount that I can incorporate into this cake. Any further increase of the wet ingredients will make the cake rather flat and gummy as the densely wet batter will have inadequate strength to rise.
2) NO coconut oil.
Have you noticed that most cakes that are made with either liquid and solid coconut oil do not have a nice tasty golden brown crust? By the way, have you also noticed that liquid coconut oil has NO coconut fragrance and taste at all? Thus, it is pointless to use liquid coconut oil if my purpose is to incorporate more coconut taste into my cakes! Plus, I WANT my chiffon cakes to have a delicious golden brown crust!!! Do you?
3) Coconut flour!(commonly available in most baking supply or health shops or most supermarkets in Australia)I have discovered that this amazing highly coconut-flavoured ingredient can absorb moisture very well. So, this means that I can add more Pulut Hitam into the cake and the coconut flour can absorb all of the extra moisture! The best thing is it can retain the moisture in the baked cake, resulting the cake to stay moist and yummy for days. How awesome is that?
However, I have to warn you that the amount of coconut flour added into the chiffon cake has to be in right proportion!
Why?See! This is the initial Pulut Hitam Chiffon Cake that I have baked with NO coconut flour. It is fully loaded with Pulut Hitam but it is too wet and tender. After cooling, it shrunk too much and can't even stand properly.
Testing testing...
This is my initial Pulut Hitam Chiffon Cake with NO coconut flour.
It looks really good when it is in the cake pan.
... but but but
Even though the un-mould cake has nice fine and soft cottony texture,
it shrink so much that it can't even stand properly!
This is my final Pulut Hitam Chiffon Cake that contains coconut flour.
Although it has slightly coarser spongy texture,
it contains the most amount of Pulut Hitam that I have tried and seen!
I hope that you will try my recipe and understand why I said that it is good...
Watch my video to see how I baked it.
Music: Bensound
If you like my blog and recipes, please LIKE, SHARE and FOLLOW me my Facebook at here or here or my Instagram @zoebakeforhappykids ... because every LIKE, SHARE and FOLLOW from you will motivate me to bake more and share more recipes. Thank you!!!Here's my recipe that is modified from Honey Sweet Bee.I love Bee's recipes! She is super awesome. However, I had to modify her recipe to incorporate more Pulut Hitam and avoid the use of coconut oil.
IMPORTANT: Please use the exact weight and make sure that all ingredients are at room temperature.
Makes one tall and perfect 8-inch (20 cm) chiffon cake
To cook and prepare the less-sweetened gula Melaka Pulut Hitam purée:
100g black glutinous rice
500ml (2 cups) water, plus more if required
2 pandan leaves, roughly shredded and knotted
60g gula Melaka, finely shaved
1/2 tsp salt
Note: This is the minimal amount that I usually cook and we can enjoy the leftover as our dessert with a generous drizzle of light coconut milk.
Wash rice with adequate water. Place them in container with excess amount of cold water and soak for at least 12 hours, overnight with a cover. To avoid the rice from going off at room temperature, soak the rice at room temperature for the first 2 hrs, then in the fridge for the next 10 hrs.
After soaking, drain rice and discard water. Then, rinse the rice again with adequate cold water.
Place rice, 250ml water and pandan leaves in a medium cooking pot with lid. Bring to a boil over high heat. Cover and reduce heat to medium-low and allow rice to simmer with occasion stirring for about 1 hr, or until the rice is very soft and tender. The pulut hitam mixture should be wet and sticky. If the mixture is too dry and the rice is not cooked to tender yet, add 1/4 to 1/2 cup water if necessary and continue to cook until the rice is tender. If too much water has been added, cook the rice with medium heat, constant stirring with NO lid until mixture is reduced to a sticky porridge-like mixture (but not completely dry like cooked rice texture).
When the rice is cooked to tender, stir in gula Melaka and salt until the sugar is completely dissolved. Remove from the heat. Discard pandan leaves and set aside to cool slightly.
When the rice is are still warm, use a blender or a hand held processor to process the rice and its liquid, making sure that the purée is well-processed and it's ok if there is some small bits and pieces in the purée. Do not leave the rice to be thoroughly cooled before processing because the completely cooled rice will be stickier and you will need to add water to process them. Weigh out 200g to use later and set it aside to cool completely.
For the egg white mixture:
240g egg whites (about 7-8)
100g caster sugar - Please do not reduce this essential amount of sugar
For the unsweetened egg yolk mixture:
90g egg yolk (about 5-6)
30g neutral tasting vegetable oil, preferably not coconut oil**
100g coconut milk, fat reduced with 13% fat*
200g cooked thick pulut hitam purée - see above
120g cake flour with 8% protein
15g coconut flour - please do not replace this with cake flour!
2g (1/2 tsp) salt
*Please check the nutrition content of the coconut milk that you are using. If the fat reduced coconut milk with 13% fat is unavailable, you can use 45g regular coconut milk with 24% fat plus 45g coconut water. If you are baking the cake in a cold day and the coconut milk is rather curdly, you can warm it up slightly in a microwave with low power until it is smooth again.
** Coconut oil is very heat stable and is made of high amount of saturated fat. Therefore, it will make chiffon cake brown lesser and more structurally stable. So this means that the cake can be slightly less softer at cool room temperature!
Preheat oven to 160°C with top and bottom heating. Please do not use fan forced heating!
For the egg white mixture:
Using an electric mixer with a whisk attachment, beat egg whites in lowest speed for at least 10 mins to stabilise the egg white mixture.
While the mixture is beating, prepare and whisk egg yolk mixture.
For the egg yolk mixture:
Using a hand whisk, whisk egg yolks and oil in a large mixing bowl until mixture is combined. Then, whisk in coconut milk and 200g cooked pulut hitam purée until combined. Sift in flour, coconut flour and salt and whisk gently until the batter is smooth and combined. Set aside.
Back to the beating of egg white mixture:
Increase beating speed to the next higher speed. While beating, add sugar gradually. Increase beating speed to the next higher speed and continue to beat until stiff peaks form. The egg white mixture should be very smooth with tiny bubbles. Do not over-beat the mixture or use too high speed to beat the mixture.
Using a hand whisk or a spatula, gently fold in the egg whites to the egg yolks mixture in 3-4 batches. It is ok to mix the 1st batch of egg white more vigorously into the egg yolk mixture but the subsequent portions must be folded in very gently. Make sure that most of the white is not visible after folding.
Pour batter into an un-greased 20 cm chiffon tube pan. Give the pan a gentle tap to remove any large air bubbles.
Chiffon baking options:
Basic - Bake at 160°C for 50-55 mins until it is thoroughly baked. IMPORTANT: This cake has high liquid content and needs to be baked for at least 50 mins in total. Cover the top of your cake very loosely with a piece of foil when it turns brown too quickly at the last 15-20 mins of baking.
With slits - This chiffon cake baking strategy will help the cake to rise uniformly rising with minimal cracks. The cake will also have a deep flavoursome top and surrounding crust.
Bake at 160°C for at least 15 mins or until a "skin" has formed on the cake surface and just before the cake surface starts to crack.
At the 10th to 14th minute, remove the cake out from oven. Cut 6 or more slits on the cake surface and place the cake back into the oven immediately. Continue to bake at 140°C for another 50 mins or until it is thoroughly baked. Increase oven temperature to 160°C and bake for another 10 mins or until the top skin of the cake is nicely browned.
Please do not bake this cake with too low oven temperature or a tray of boiling water (also known as steam bake). Detailed explanation is at here.
After baking, invert the cake immediately to cool on a wire rack. Allow the cake to cool completely in the pan before removing it from the pan. Do not unmould the cake by pressing it! The cake is very fragile!!! To unmould, please use a blunt thin plastic spatula or knife to run along the cake's edges and gently push the cake out from the pan.
Slice with a serrated knife and serve.
Store any uneaten in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days. And it is still very soft and moist even on the 3rd day of bake!
Enjoy!!!
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