As many of may know, I love to cook Asian food as this is what I was brought up with. Having lived in the UK for over 10 years, now would seem an appropriate time to try old and new Asian food recipes and blog about it.
I always love Chinese sponge cake as they are very light and spongy. On the other hand, my husband is not so keen on them as he feels that the sponge cakes have no content and they are too light. I then saw my Singaporean Facebook friend posted a photo of her steamed cake and I decided to Google it. There are quite a few recipes for the Steamed Vanilla Sponge Cake. I tried two recipes: Siukitchen Steamed Cake and Steamed Pandan Sponge Cake. Both recipes are very successful but I would prefer the latter one as it uses less ingredients.
After struggling with a long time with measuring and conversions, I finally gave in and bought measuring cups.
Ingredients:
- 4 large eggs
- 2/3 cup sugar (use 3/4 cup for sweeter cake)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 cup self-raising flour, sifted
- 50ml 7-Up or Sprite
The only thing that is different from the Little Corner of Mine website is that I swapped the extract to Vanilla. I was not able to get any Pandan extract.
Method:
- Beat eggs with an electric mixer until light and frothy.
- Add in sugar and continue to beat until thick and creamy.
- Add in vanilla extract and beat to mix well.
- Use a spatula and fold in flour lightly in 3 batches.
- Lastly add in 7-Up and mix well. I find it easier to use an electric mixer to mix them up.
- Scoop mixture into individually paper lined silicon cups and steam on high heat for 15 minutes. This is recommend by Little Corner of Mine. I had tried using paper cases and it turned out horrible and wet. So I used ramekins as this is what I have available. Also instead of steaming it on a high heat, I tried steaming it on a low heat. I don’t have a proper steamer so I used a wok and placed the ramekins on a metal stand in the wok and added hot water to steam it. The cakes heated up and rose quickly. By using a low heat, I found it worked better. So do adjust according to your requirements.
I love this recipe as there are minimal ingredients! I had used many different UK brands of self-raising flour and all the cakes turned out quite dark on the outside. This is my second try and they didn’t turn out too bad. As I mentioned before, I am learning to bake and cook, so please bear with my photos for now!
Hope you all give it a go and let me know what you think!
