[Indonesian Recipes] Cassava and Palm Sugar Pudding

This dessert is very easy to make. Mother told me that it is a very common Indonesian dessert, but I have never seen or eaten any before. It was quite surreal when she whipped it out and served small portions of it on these tiny little saucers in no time at all. Cassava and palm sugar pudding is DELICIOUS dessert in Indonesian.

The key of success lies on the mould you are using. If you are being super creative (like what I have been doing for the past couple of weeks, shameless self promotion, that is), it is going to look absolutely delicious. Nobody will believe you that it is that easy to make. It is sticky, it is sweet and it looks pretty, in a rustic kind of way.

Anybody knows what this dessert is called?

I used a couple of medium sized cassava roots. I washed and scrubbed the skin under running water for quite a bit. The cassava we got here from the market come very fresh, complete with dirt and all.

Make about 2mm incision along the root. Using a sharp knife, peel the hard skin off.

Grate the cassava as coarse as possible. It would be impossible to cut or julienned since the root is really hard.

Get them all grated.

Boil water under a steamer in advance. When the water boils, transfer grated cassava into the steamer over high heat, for about 7-8 minutes.

These are the organic palm sugar from Aceh that I got from my uncle. We stock them up weekly. We have been using palm sugar (or gula melaka) so much lately for desserts and jellies. I love the taste of the sugar, it is earthy and caramel like, very unlike those white sugar we use daily.

Grate palm sugar coarsely using a sharp knife. Or you can just chop them up roughly.

At the end of the cooking time, the cassava would be fully cooked and looks slightly wilted.

Transfer cassava in a mixing bowl. Add palm sugar too.

Mix them up quickly while the cassava is still hot.

Line your mould with a piece of plastic and start filling up moulds with the mixture. The high starch content of the cassava and melted palm sugar will harden on standing.

To serve, remove pudding from moulds and serve with grated coconut. Oh yeah, I forgot to prepare grated coconut on mine that day. I garnished mine with grated cassava that hasn’t been mixed with palm sugar.

Cassava and Palm Sugar Pudding

Makes 8 servings

Ingredients:

1,1 kg cassava roots, peeled and grated, about 800 g grated cassava
200 g palm sugar, or gula melaka, chopped coarsely

Directions:

Steam grated cassava for 7-8 minutes.
Combine freshly steamed cassava with palm sugar in a mixing bowl.
Fill prepared mould immediately with the pudding mixture.
Let cool on standing.
To serve, remove pudding from mould and serve with grated coconut.

This recipe and image sources are referred in website: Indochinekitchen.com. Thanks so much!