Recipe: Kueh Bika Ambon

Not sure if you have heard about this Indonesian kueh, Bika Ambon? It's actually a very popular snack made of mainly tapioca, coconut milk, sugar, eggs and fermented with yeast. Judging from the ingredients it's something that the mother and I will love. :) 

Ingredients (source):

85 g sago or tapioca starch
¼ tsp salt
½ tsp instant yeast
145 g eggs
170 ml freshly squeezed coconut milk, undiluted
85 g sugar
20 g young, light green pandan leaves

Method:

1. Thoroughly mix tapioca starch, salt and dry yeast. Add eggs and whisk till smooth.

2. Stir coconut milk with sugar over medium heat till the pot is too hot to hold but not too hot to touch.

3. Stir batter and, at the same time, slowly pour coconut milk into batter.

4. Wash pandan leaves and cut into small pieces. Pound finely and strain to yield 1 tsp pandan juice. Discard pulp. Add juice to batter. Mix thoroughly. 

5. Set aside, covered, till batter is full of small bubbles, 2½-3 hours if you're in the tropics. Gently whisk starch in bottom of bowl till just evenly mixed in.

6. Preheat oven to 160°C with only bottom heat turned on. Oven should be ready at the same time as batter. Line a baking pan with  parchment paper.

7. Pour batter into pan. Bake in bottom of oven till batter doesn't jiggle when shaken, about 35minutes. Increase temperature to 180°C. Turn on top heat. Move cake to middle of oven. Continue baking till golden brown, another 15 minutes or so.

8. Unmould by lifting parchment paper. Leave cake on a wire rack till cold. Cut into pieces and serve.

Fresh out the oven.

Close up. :D

Unmoulded. 

Sliced.

As you can see from the photo, the honeycomb of my bika ambon isn't very obvious as it should be. :( So I went to research a bit and found that in order to get the pretty honeycomb appearance, step 7 is very important! As my oven doesn't have the function of top and bottom heat, so I guess that's the reason for the kueh not having the honeycomb. :( Anyone wants to get me a professional oven? :D :D :D 

HAHAHA! 

Oh wells, other than that the kueh is so good that I regretted not making more. Wasted. :/ 

Alright. I'll try again when I invent in a better oven. Till then. :)

.xoxo.

Lirong.