A colleague of mine loves my honeycomb cake very much. When I was pondering what cake to bake on Thursday night to feed my colleagues in the office, I thought of her and I decided on honeycomb cake.
Honeycomb cake is a traditional Malay/Indonesian caramel cake. It is called Kuih Sarang Semut in Malay. It looks like a bee-hive in the inside, is a bit chewy/spongy and has a distinctive taste that set is apart from the typical western baked cake.
I have collected a few recipes for honeycomb cake. All these recipes call for the same standard ingredients like condense milk, sugar, flour and baking soda. There are only difference in the quantity of the ingredients, some call for lesser flour and more eggs, some more water and lesser condense milk, which means will yield honeycomb cakes that are different in the texture.
For the honeycomb cake that I baked this time round. I tried out a recipe found in "Olden Tasty Treats" recipe book which has a good collection of traditional local cakes and other bakeries.
Compared to the last recipe which I used, this recipe gives me a cake that has more holes, softer and less chewy and yet equally tasty.
Honeycomb Cake Recipe
(yield a 9 x 6 x 3 inch loaf cake)
Ingredients
- 250g sugar (I used 190g of raw brown sugar)
- 230g water
- 150g all purpose flour
- 2 tsp baking soda
- 90g condensed milk (I used low-fat version)
- 80g unsalted butter
- 5 eggs
Methods
- Preheat over to 175 degree C. Grease a 9 x 6 x 3 rectangular loaf pan.
- Sieve flour and baking soda together. Set aside.
- Cook half the sugar over low heat till brown. Pour in the water and braise till sugar dissolved. Add in remaining sugar and boil till sugar dissolved.
- Beat butter and condensed milk at high speed till creamy.
- In separate bowl, beat the egg until it foams, add them into butter mixture gradually and mix well.
- Add in the flour mixture and beat at low speed to combine well. Pour in the caramelised sugar syrup and mix well.
- Pour batter into the loaf pan and bake for 1.5 hours or until a knife inserted into the centre comes out clean. (It took me only 50 minutes of baking time).
- Invert the cake on rack to let it cool.
This Honeycomb cake post will be my entry for Oct 2011's Aspiring Bakers - Make Traditional Kuih.
I'd never heard of this before, but it looks great! Thanks for the education! :)
ReplyDeleteHi Agnes,
ReplyDeleteThis looks very tempting, I was just discussing in somebody else's blog (Peng's Kitchen) the difference between kueh ambon and this kueh sarang semut. Do you know the difference?
This is also on my to-do list but I am a bit put off by the amount of sugar and condensed milk, but maybe I will try yours, looks like a healthier version :)
cheers
bee @EEWIF
Hi Bee
ReplyDeleteBoth kuehs are spongy, chewy and have the beehive texture but used different ingredients. Ambon uses yeast and tapioca flour while this one doesn't. I have a recipe for ambon which I've yet to try it out. I think I should try it out soon.
Cheers, Agnes
I am searching for this recipe as my colleague bake this for sale, it is delicious. This kuih seem common to malay but I seldom see chinese bake it. Thanks for sharing the recipe. One question here, do we need to cook the sugar first before add in water? Only sugar in a pan? I thought this cake is using steam method but saw from your method, you bake it. Any different?
ReplyDeleteI love this cake.. But I prefer it to be chewy.. What should i do to make it chewy??
ReplyDelete