Steamed Rice Cake

Steamed rice cakes are one of my favourite childhood snacks when I was in Singapore. I grew up eating them for breakfast. They come in various bright colours and you simply dip the cake into orange sugar (brown sugar coloured orange) to eat. The cake is very plain by design, so dipping sugar makes it more delicious to eat. I bought a packet of orange sugar when I was in Singapore in August and have wanted to bake this cake for a while. Now I have finally got around to do it. It requires minimal ingredients but it takes a long time to prepare. So if you want to have it for breakfast, remember you need at least 2 hours.

In addition to the ingredients, it’s also useful to have these small aluminium cups which I bought from Singapore too. This recipe is to make with coconut milk but I have replaced it with fresh milk which is a good substitute.

Ingredients:

• 200g rice flour, sifted
• 200ml coconut milk/milk
• 160ml boiling water
• 2 tablespoon baking powder
• 120g caster sugar
• ¼ tablespoon vanilla essence
• Different food colourings

Method:

1. Mix the rice flour and milk together. Then add boiling water and mix well. Set aside to cool. When cooled, stir in 1 tablespoon of baking powder and leave for 1 hour.
2. Add the caster sugar, 1 tablespoon of baking powder and vanilla essence to the mixture.
3. Line the aluminium cups with cupcake papers.
4. Separate the mixture into a few portions and add the food colourings. Pour the mixture into the cups until 90% full and leave to rise for 30 minutes.
   
5. Steam over boiling water for about 15 minutes.

The cake is quite sticky and best consumed while still hot! Remember to dip in sugar.

I used pink, blue and green food colouring. After steaming, my pink cake turned into orange so next time I might have to use red food colouring instead to see if I can get a pink steamed rice cake.

If you go Singapore for holiday, do try them out. They are inexpensive (3 for $2) and light to eat for breakfast.