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Water Chestnut Cake

Annie
Prep Time 15 minutes
Total Time 15 minutes
Cuisine Chinese

Ingredients
  

  • 8 fresh water chestnuts
  • 160 g Water chestnut powder
  • 450 ml water room temperature
  • oil for brushing the container
  • 225 g of Rock sugar
  • 475 ml water

Instructions
 

  • Peel the water chestnuts and chop them in small cubes (or shred them
  • Mix the 450ml water with the water chestnut powder. Make sure it’s well stirred and then pass it through a sieve.
  • Oil your container and make sure your steamer is ready.
  • Boil 475ml water and dissolve the rock sugar in it, it might take a while if you have big lumps of rock sugar. Keep stirring. When it’s all dissolved, put your water chestnuts in for 1 minute.
  • Pour the water chestnut powder mixture in while stirring, turn off the heat. Keep stirring for 1 minute.
  • Pour into the container and steam for about half an hour or until the cake has become translucent.
  • Let it cool and it should still be a bit wobbly. Chill in the fridge overnight to firm it up, then slice it and pan fry with tiny bit of oil. The outside should be a bit crispy and inside all soft and gooey!

Notes

I’ve put some flower petals in so you can see tiny yellow petals! And sometimes you’ll see these cakes in yellow, that’s because of a different type of sugar being used. You can use different sugar for different colour:
Greyish – Rock sugar like mine. Not the prettiest but has a lovely subtle flavour.
Totally translucent – Caster sugar. It’s very pretty with little cubes of water chestnut and petals!
Golden / yellow – Caster sugar mixed with cane sugar (or sometimes a bit of custard powder). The most common type you will see in shops as we all know how Chinese love their gold colour during New Year!