Yam Cake

My friend, Hooi Thiam, likes to make Yam Cake for her family for breakfast. She thinks that it is much healthier than eating processed cereals.

Thanks to Hooi Thiam for this recipe.

Well, if you want to make this, then, you've gotta be very hardworking. It takes a lot of work to prepare this dish. Unless you have someone who appreciates the food, you might as well forget about making it.

My mom always says, buy a few pieces of it to satisfy the taste buds is so much easier than cooking it by yourself.

A good yam cake depends very much on the yam itself. And so, each time the taste of a yam cake that you bake might differ slightly due to the texture of the yam.

I have this honest vege seller, Rabbit Teeth Aunty. She will choose the best yam in her store for me. A good yam is 'powdery'. The knife will have white liquid on it as shown in picture no. 3.

Pictures showing process (top left to right)

The main ingredients are:
1) 1/2 yam
2) one large onion
3) 3 tablespoons dried shrimps
4) 250 gram of blended rice flour (1/2 packet)
5) 1 teaspoon salt
6) 1 teaspoon sugar
7) 125ml + 750ml of water (put separately)

My friend says that you can add in other ingredients such as sweet potatoes, lap cheong (preserved wax meat) or even minced pork. Trust me, I tried that and it's so delicious!

1) Cut the yam into cubes
2) Chop the dried shrimps coarsely
3) Slice the onion
4) Add the salt and sugar to the flour and mix well with 750ml of water. Strain the mixture.
5) Fry the onion till fragrant. Add in dried shrimps.
6) Add in yam. Then, add in 125ml of water. Keep frying till the yam absorb most of the water.
7) Add in the flour mixture in 3 stages. Pour in the mixture and fry till sticky. Don't panic here. It is meant to be dry and sticky. Add in more flour mixture and keep stirring.
8) Turn off the heat and scoop out the mixture into a big bowl.
9) Put to steam above boiling water for 30 minutes.
10) The cooked yam cake needs about 1 and a half hour to totally dry up. So don't get panic when you see the finished product which is quite wet the moment it comes out of the pot.

You can keep the unfinished yam cake in refrigerator and steam it again the next day before eating. The yam cake can be kept for 3 to 4 days before it turns mouldy.
My friend goes a distance for her yam cake - she blended her own rice to be made flour! So, her yam cake can only last for 1 to 2 days. The logic is that - the blended rice flour we bought from the market contained preservatives to keep it fresh. At the moment, I opted the easier way out, the ready blended rice flour! What about you?

Do enjoy the process!