Steamed Tapioca Thousand Layer Cake

Let's make my mom's steamed tapioca cake, Lan Foon Teh. It's a brown sugar cake with beautiful translucent layers and a delightfully soft and chewy texture. First, we're going to mix 390 grams of tapioca starch with one and a half cups of room temperature water. At this stage, the batter will feel very stiff at the bottom. Don't worry too much about that, just set the bowl aside. To flavor the Lan Foon Teh, my mom typically uses brown sugar slabs like this. If it's too difficult to find, use light brown sugar instead. Add 370 grams of brown sugar slabs and two and a half cups of water to a saucepan. Then bring the liquid to boil. Continue simmering until the sugar slabs dissolve completely. My mom likes to add a teaspoon of gan shuai in the batter for two reasons. One reason, according to my mom, is that the gan shuai makes the cake less sticky when you're eating it. Another reason is that the gan shuai enhances the color of the cake. You can leave out the gan shuai if it's difficult to source. Gradually mix this hot sugary liquid with the rest of the batter. When my mom was teaching me how to make this cake, she said it is important to use some hot water to make the batter so that the cooked cake is nice and smooth. She tried making the batter with cold water before and the cake just didn't look right when it was cooked. Now the reason why we added some room temp water at the beginning is to prevent the starch from gelatinizing when we mix in the hot liquid. To steam the cake, place a steaming rack inside a large wok. Fill the wok with enough water so that the water line is about a half inch below the top of the rack. Bring the water to boil and place a greased 9 to 10 inch round pan over the rack. Pour a two-third cup of batter into the pan. The batter should cover the bottom of the pan completely. Cover the wok with the lid and steam for four minutes over medium heat. Can you see how translucent this layer is? You can actually see the bottom of the pan. This is an indication that the layer is fully cooked. Now the starch in the batter will start sinking to the bottom of the bowl in just minutes. Make sure to give the batter a stir before adding more batter to the pan. This cake has a total of nine layers and you'll use a two-third cup of batter for each layer. The first two layers take about four minutes to cook. Layers three to five take five minutes and layers seven to nine will take six minutes. You can also make this a six layer cake by steaming one cup of batter each time. I wanted to show you how the cake looks like when it hasn't steamed for long enough. Do you see how the entire center is opaque? Even if you have a small opaque patch like this you want to steam the layer until it's completely translucent otherwise you'll get opaque layers stuck in the middle of the cake. To show you a variation on this recipe my mom sometimes adds cooked beans in each layer of the cake for textural contrast. After you steam the last layer there will be some excess liquid at the top. Drain it. If you notice that the surface of the cake has a lot of deep wrinkles after you drain the water don't worry too much about it. It means that the heat source was a little high when you steamed the cake but it'll still taste fine. While the lan fouette is still warm top with some sesame seeds and coconut. Let the cake cool completely before cutting into it. You can use a large knife to cut the cake but make sure you grease the knife with oil so the cake doesn't stick to the knife. You can also use scissors or a plastic cake cutter to cut the cake. I just love these beautiful layers. Some people enjoy eating this layer by layer but I just like to bite into it. You can find the full recipe on my blog which I link to below. Don't forget to subscribe to my channel!