Khangkhang made

grey-green kaya today. It’s the most unpleasing colour, but it tastes good. This was my first attempt at kaya-making and I surprised Daddy (that I actually made kaya and also with its colour). It’s actually not hard to make at all, and doesn’t take too long – a good project for any holiday. This is the recipe:

 

Ingredients

• 10 eggs
• 420ml thick coconut milk, extracted from 2 grated coconuts
• 575g sugar
• 3 pandan leaves, knotted

 

Method

1. Beat eggs and sugar well with a hand whisk. Put beaten eggs and pandan leaves in a saucepan over a very gentle heat to dissolve the sugar.

2. When sugar has dissolved, remove the pan away from the heat and stir in thick coconut milk, mix well, then strain the mixture into a double boiler pot.

3. Cook over rapidly boiling water. Keep stirring the mixture with a long wooden spoon until it thickens; top up the boiling water in the lower pot whenever necessary.

4. Then wrap the lid with a big enough tea-towel (to prevent water dripping into the custard), replace it on the pot and steam the custard till a curd-like texture appears. (Do not stir the custard during this time.)

5. When kaya is ready, discard the pandan leaves.

 

6. Put kaya into a food processor and process till smooth (takes only a few seconds).

 

Okay, so I only used half of the ingredients, because I didn’t want to have to pedder my firstattempt kaya to an unappetized crowd, but it still turned out to be quite a decent sized container full. I was so tempted to add in green colouring for that pandan kaya look, but I decided against it since I do live with a bunch of health conscious people.

 

The next time I ever make kaya though, I will use brown sugar instead of white. I’m guessing a rich brown colour beats mouldy green anyday.

 

Oh, and as for the double boiler – just fill a saucepan with water and let boil, and then cook the kaya in a pot placed in the saucepan. Works perfectly. With the steaming part, many recipes actually ask you to steam for 2-3 hours, but when I checked the kaya after steaming for just around half an hour, I got the curd-like texture already, with a some slightly watery bits in the middle. But after mixing it all together and processing it, the texture was great (by my standards anyway).

 

It lends a very housewifey feel, after succeeded in making my very own homemade kaya (: Do try it yourself someday.