My favorite was Vietnamese coconut cassava cake. This cake is unlike Western cakes, it may simply be made with just frozen cassava, coconut milk and glucose, these are the building blocks of the dessert.
Around the weekends when I used to look grocery shopping with my parents at Oriental supermarkets, my mum would be on a quest to get the week’s worth of groceries that she had planned and budgeted for, she’d be busy scouring bargains to stock up on and haggle with the shop owner for a free goodie once our shopping basket reached a certain amount.
Most of the time it will just be a free bottle of oyster sauce but it gets added to virtually everything we cook and we’d go through containers fast. A free of charge bottle of oyster sauce is well worth fighting for… and Far east mums will go to great lengths to save somewhat of money here and there.
I would land on my own mission down the special aisles eyeing off the shelves overflowing with well known Pocky, Hello Kitty, Yan and the like, to see what treat I really could get my parents to purchase for me. Really hard to resist Oriental sweets when they make everything so damn sweet!
But in the end I would personally always be driven to the selection of sweets near to the counter. These types of are generally made by people who work from home, and distribute their goods to Asian food markets, which sell on commission payment. It would be fresh, homemade and have my parent’s approval. My favorite was Vietnamese coconut cassava cake.
Vietnamese coconut cassava cake
This cake is unlike Western cakes which are light, fluffy and crumbly. In fact, it is the complete reverse of. It’s dense, sticky and chewy. For people who aren’t used to this kind of texture for a cake, I think about that it would be quite strange. A whole lot of Asian cakes are like this and it is not an accident. Back in the day, few homeowners owned ovens so many cakes were made by steaming resulting in a spongy texture. Also, cassava is used, which is very starchy and the plant also produces tapioca starch (similar to hammer toe flour/starch) – a thickening agent for sauce and soups etc., hence it can glutinous. As people bought ovens, they adapted and can bake cakes that would normally be steamed. Thus now you can find steamed and baked versions of cassava cake. I really like baked cassava cake as it has a caramelized crispy gold top which is a standard for Western truffles. This is the best benefit of the pastry but it’s still gross inside, so you get the best of both worlds.
I have already been trying to recreate my childhood treat. I seemed up recipes on the web and found that a cassava cake is a common dessert across South East Asia as a consequence to the tropical local climate, cassava thrives in the area. In Vietnam really known as bánh khoai mì nướng which actually means cooked cassava cake and in Malaysia they call it up kuih bingka with kuih referring to bite-sized snack/dessert foods commonly found in Malaysia.
Frozen Cassava – Vinawang
I’ve uncovered that there are many ways to create a coconut cassava cake. It may simply be made with just frozen cassava, coconut milk and glucose, these are the building blocks of the dessert. There are various quality recipes which add other materials such as dessicated coconut, condensed milk, yellow mung beans and eggs. Just about every recipe I came across was different, reflecting the fact that this is one particular homemade treats where every mum would have their own way of making it. So after examining a few tested recipes, I started baking cassava cake with simply a few ingredients and each time I made it, My spouse and i would vary the elements and adapted my menu until I got something that I felt was much better than any other cassava cake I’ve ever enjoyed. It’s as sweet as I want it to be, coconutty and buttery with a hint of nuttiness due to the addition of yellow mung beans.
This is also a gluten free dessert. It’s interesting to notice that a lot of Asian cakes are gluten free due to grain flour, tapioca flour, orange mung beans etc. being frequently used to make bread as they plants are easily cultivated in their warm climate, wheat does not grow as well.
Vietnamese Coconut Cassava Cake
(I didn’t follow one menu, I kept testing and adding in several ingredients until I got my desired taste and consistency of texture but credit would go to recipes by Pham Inévitable and Lily’s Wai Sek Hong which I attracted the most inspiration from)
- ~ 900g grated cassava (two bags of frozen grated cassava from Asian supermarket)
- 150g dried yellow mung beans
- 170g butter, melted
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup caster sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ¼ cup of coconut milk + 1 cup coconut milk
- ½ cup sweetened condensed milk
- 1 cup dessicated coconut
Frozen Cassava Grated – Vinawang
Take note: Fresh cassava requires much preparation (you have to peel then soak to eliminate some of the aggression, grate, soak again, reconcile the starch, incorporate starch with grated cassava and so forth. ) so I chosen to use frozen roughly grated cassava that I purchased from my Asian superstore.
Technique
Preheat oven to 180C. Line a 20cm square baking tin with foil and grease with melted butter.
Thaw the frozen cassava I still left it in the chiller overnight and then put it in a strainer to drain away the extra liquid.
Cassava grated
Prep yellow hue mung beans – Found in a bowl, wash green mung beans thoroughly and soak for at at a minimum 3-4 hours before baking. Drain make yellow mung beans in a saucepan, cover with water and bring to boil, then lower heat and make meals mung beans for 15 minutes until the yellow hue mung beans are gentle and tender. Drain well and then place the cooked yellow mung espresso beans in a blender and pulse a few times, then add in .25 cup of coconut dairy and process to an excellent puree.
Pureed yellow mung beans with coconut milk
In a sizable bowl, whisk the caster sugar and eggs along, then add in vanilla extract, salt, melted chausser, 1 cup of coconut milk, condensed milk, cassava, dessicated coconut and pureed yellow mung beans. Blend together well so that everything is fully integrated.
Pour the mixture into the baking tin and bake for 1 hour before the top is a crisp golden darkish.
Cool and then cut into pieces.
You won’t be able to get more tropical than the blend of cassava and coconut so I actually is entering this wedding cake into this month’s Special Adventures Blog Hop published by Dining with a Stud. Enjoy: )
