Yup, I've been on a steamed (rice) cake craze these days because:
1. There was a crazy shortage of wheat flour recently (they're back on the shelves now, though) and I ended up picking up a pack of rice flour.
2. My "proper" oven has officially run its course with me and the backup, 'similar-to-an-airfryer' one that we have in the house takes almost 2x the usual time to bake, even at higher temperatures.
Plus, steamed rice cakes are also gluten-free (not that I'm on this BS "healthy" trend, but my mum does get bloated easily with wheat bread... but she still eats them anyway) and being steamed and not baked also makes them less "heaty".
So here goes! To get around 8 steamed cupcakes, you'll need:
170g rice flour
190ml water
10g full cream milk powder
60g castor sugar
1.5 tsp baking powder
Optional:
1 tsp dried Osmanthus flower
I intended to make this Osmanthus flavour, hence I only added a little bit of the milk powder such that the milky flavour will not overpower the Osmanthus flavour. To make rice cakes with only milk flavour, you can replace the water with milk instead. The amount of sugar is also nearly the bare minimum for you to taste an obvious sweetness in the cakes, so I'll not recommend reducing it any further, unless you don't mind a bland steamed cake.
This recipe is super easy to make, and you'll only need a large bowl and a whisk. Dump all your ingredients in and mix until you get a smooth, watery batter. But since I'm adding Osmanthus flower, I will need to let the flowers steep in some hot water first.
So to roughly 100ml of hot water, add in 1 tsp of Osmanthus dried flower and let it steep for 10 to 15 minutes, before adding in the remaining 180ml room temperature water. Then, all in all the dry ingredients and mix until everything is well combined.
Divide your batter equally into your cupcake/muffin moulds that's lined with cupcake liners.
Once your moulds are filled, steam them at high heat immediately if you wish to achieve the open-mouth, huat kueh look. If you prefer to have your steamed cake with a dome-top, steam them at a low to medium heat instead.
Depending on your steamer and heat, steam your rice cakes for 15 to 18 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
Do make sure that your moulds are laid perfectly FLAT for them to open up nicely/symmetrically.
These steamed cakes are best eaten when still warm from the steamer, as they'll harden up considerably when cooled, and the texture will be very similar (though not nearly as hard) to a cold huat kueh. It will regain some softness if you reheat them up slightly in the steamer again, but they'll never be as soft as they were when freshly steamed.
Till then,
Mia Foo
