*note: not Malaysian at all

Recently, a coworker hosted a Malaysian/South East Asian potluck night.  I had asked the host what to bring, and she suggested dessert.  Now, I don’t know how to make any Malay food nor desserts, so I was banging my head against a wall trying to figure out what to make.  Finally, I remembered a week before the potluck in an unrelated conversation, one of the Malay girls that was coming to the potluck suggested I make a steamed chocolate cake as a project.  If a suggestion comes from a Malaysian person, that makes the food Malaysian right??  Right??  Right! 🙂

(We actually first tried making a pineapple tart recipe we got from rasamalaysia.com which I’ll write up in another post.  We kinda failed hard at it though.)

Ingredients:

 Cake:

• 180 g Butter
• 200g Sugar
• 200g Evaporated Milk
• 2 Eggs
• 100g Flour
• 50g Cocoa Powder
• .5 teaspoon Baking Powder
• .5 teaspoon Baking Soda
• .5 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
• Rum to taste (1 – 2 shots)

OPTIONAL – Chocolate Fudge

We made some of this, however didn’t end up using it as we prefer our cakes not as sweet.

• 200g Condensed Milk
• .5 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
• 2 tablespoons Coconut Oil
• 20g Cocoa Powder
• Pinch of Salt

 

Directions:

Throw the sugar and butter into a saucepan over low heat.

Keep stirring it, while adding in the evaporated milk and vanilla. Mmmmm evaporated milk and vanilla.

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Keep stirring until it becomes smooth, and then take it off of the heat.  Beat the eggs slightly, and then add it into the smooth mixture.

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In a separate large mixing bowl, sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and cocoa all together.  Pour the liquid mixture into the mixing bowl, and stir well.  It doesn’t need to be perfectly smooth, but there shouldn’t be any clumps like you leave in pancakes.  Now is the time to add the rum.  Being trini, you know I put more rum than I should’ve 🙂

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Pour it into a greased, or lined pan to make it easier to flip out.

Steam your cake for a solid 45 mins.  Take a look at our ghetto steaming setup, since we don’t have a proper steamer large enough for a cake.  Aluminum foil tent ftw!

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Now, if you wanted to make the chocolate fudge topping, now is the time.  Throw all of the ingredients in together in a small saucepan, and keep stirring over low heat.

Eventually it will become nice and smooth.  Take it off the heat when that happens.

To check if your cake is done steaming, take a tooth pick, poke the middle, and see if it comes out clean without any liquid stuck to it.

Finally, for presentation, just flip it upside down, sift some icing sugar over the top, and decorate however you want!

Ta da!  There you have it — ‘Malaysian’ Steamed Chocolate cake!  Since it’s steamed and not baked, it will be the most moist cake you’ve ever had.  The extra water will also make it super dense, so be prepared for a heavy cake!

 

Protip: As I said earlier, we made the fudge but didn’t end up using it because in our test run, it was too sweet.

However, if only used as a drizzle, it ends up having better balance!