Yam Cake aka 芋头糕

 

Any food that make with yam I will certainly welcome. My top flavour chinese dessert are Orn Nee aka Yam Paste (芋泥). I will always looking forward to the dessert during the wedding dinner and I will pray that the last dish will be yam paste topped with pumpkin instead of ginkgo nut. Although I knew that ginkgo nut is much pricey than pumpkin but to me yam with pumpkin is a perfect combination dessert. I can wolf at least 3 to 4 bowl of that dessert.

 

I came across this blogger who share her home-make yam cake that look so attractive and make my saliva drooling. So the few days before I was so excited and looking forward to the weekend to prepare the dish. I told my mum that I wanted to make yam cake on the weekend and she help me to bought the ingredient such as dry prawn and dry chinese mushroom even though I didn't told her to buy. So thoughtful of her.   

 

According to the advise given, choose the light weight yam to achieve the soft, fluffy and powdery texture. The day I went to the wet market and trust my own hand feeling to choose the most light weight yam. I bought 2 small yam and cut into cubes, I didn't weight the yam according to the recipe given and I used it all that resulted a hard yam cake due to overloaded of yam. After all I find the yam cake taste pretty decent with lots of yam cube.

 

I didn't want to keep left over yam because yam is difficult to preserve or store over a periods of time. I thought more is good but not that actually. A lesson to learn from that not to overload the ingredients.

 

The frying and cooking is done by my mum, I only do the cutting and preparing of the ingredient. But I will and want to do the frying and cooking by myself for the next attempt. ;p

By the way I make some adjustment on the ingredient by my own preference.

 

*Recipe source:

http://www.maameemoomoo.com/blog/2010/10/20/yam-cake-aka-wu-tao-gou/

 

Ingredient:

• 300g rice flour – soak in 800ml water (300ml chicken stock + 150ml scrimp water + 150ml mushrooms water + 200ml plain water) for 30 minutes before cooking
• 700g yam – shave off skin, dice into 1 cm cube and soak in a basin of water
• 1 chinese sausage – skinned, steamed and diced finely
• 8 pieces of dried chinese mushrooms – soak in 150ml of water until soft, wash thoroughly and slice thinly
• 8 tbsp dried prawns – washed, soak in 150ml of water till soft 
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil + 3 tbsp sesame oil
• salt & pepper to taste

Garnish

• Fried shallots
• Spring onion, cut finely
• 1 tbsp white sesame seed (toasted)

Method:

1. In a wok, stir fry dried prawns in one tbsp of vegetable oil till lightly golden, add diced chinese sausage and mushrooms fry for another 2 mins and add in the 3 tbsp sesame oil fry for another 1 mins.  
2. Drain diced yam and add to the fried ingredients and fry.
3. Fry well for 2-3 mins till yam changes colour.
4. Stir rice water mixture till well blended and pour into wok.
5. Combine all ingredients and stir vigorously to prevent clumping at the base.
6. Add salt and pepper to taste.
7. When batter start to thicken, turn off heat.
8. Transfer batter into a round or rectangular for steaming.
9. Steam for 40 mins or till inserted skewer comes out clean.
10. Remove yam cake to a wire rack to cool down, sprinkle garnishing and cut into desired size for serving.