Baked glutinous rice cake

It is a famous saying that the moon one day after the Mid-autumn Festival is even rounder. Unfortunately, it was a rainy day. I shot the moon on the next day, it seems that the moon was still pretty round:

As a 24W6D's pregnant woman, I just feel lazy and haven't touched my baking pans for almost six months. Even when the traditional Chinese Mid-autumn Festival arrived, I didn't find enough passion to make moon-cake.

When rearranging my kitchen, I found a package of glutinous rice flour which my hubby brought from China this April. Well, maybe, I should start to do something? Deal! Let me bake a glutinous rice cake. If the glutinous rice flour is available, this cake is incredibly easy to prepare. In North America, this kind of flour can be bought in oriental stores, the package is like (be very careful and check the long name word by word, because there is another rice flour with the similar appearance):

In a mixing bowl, well blend glutinous rice flour 500 g (1 lb is okay), 1 tbsp baking powder, 3/4 cup vegetable oil, 3 egg, 2 1/2 cup milk (I use 2% milk), 1 cup sugar. Lightly grease a 9 inch baking pan and then pour in the batter, bake under a preheated oven (375F) for 1 1/2 hours (or until the toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean). I personally like to bake only half of the ingredients in the same size baking pan (around 45 minutes), which brings a thin cake and tastes more fantastic. Different nuts can be sprinkled on the top of the batter to create nutty aroma.

Happy thanks-giving!

cassava dessert

I grabbed a cassava (also known as yucca, yuca or even tapioca) yesterday, just because it is so cheap, only cost me $ 0.99/lb.

My friends suggest me bake cassava cake, but... it takes 1 hour to bake, kinda energy-consuming. So I changed my mind, and wanna make something unique and relatively green.

Okay, I announce that I create a cassava dessert as shown in my photo, LOL.

It tastes soooooooooooooo goooooooooood, with marvellous smell of coconut, not too sweet, very healthy dessert. Look at the inside, soft red bean paste filling ^&^.

First of all, I would like to talk about the toxin in cassava, which is called cyanide-based toxin. Because of that terrible compound, raw cassava can't be eaten. As a very important first step, boil cassava to get rid of this toxin. If it can be poked through easily, it means the cooking is done. Strain and remove water, wash with running water thoroughly, and strain dry. Now it is ready to be used in further cooking.

For my cassava dessert, besides mashed cassava, I need one small sweet potato (cooked and mashed), 2 tbsp coconut cream powder, 1/2 cup granulated sugar, 4 tbsp sticky rice flour and 1 cup adzuki bean paste.

Blend cassava, sweet potato, sugar, coconut cream powder, sticky rice flour. Wearing disposable gloves to avoid ingredients sticking on the hand and making mess, form an elastic dough. On the working counter, line a sheet of plastic wrap or parchment paper, place dough on, and divide the dough into eight portions.

On a plate, sprinkle dry shredded coconut.

Wrap each dough portion with adzuki bean paste filling, round well and roll on coconut to have it evenly covered with coconut. Put in muffin cup and place in steamer.

Steam for 15 minutes.

And...

Enjoy!