Saturday, August 13, 2011

Homemade Kaya tastes the BEST!

So as part of my "nesting" season, I'm sorting out my recipes - which I'm proud to say is about 90% done!!! And this is when I realized that I have quite a number of recipes that I have printed out but have not tried yet. So I'm hoping to try out a couple of them before baby pops.

I'm usually reliant on my Kaya stock from Singapore because I haven't found any good ones in Stuttgart. However, after reading many recipes and hearing that it ain't that tough to make your own Kaya, I decided to get my hands dirty and tackle this one recipe!

Kaya is basically Singaporean jam. It consists of coconut milk, sugar, eggs and pandan flavouring. I grew up eating kaya on my toast almost everyday for breakfast. If it wasn't Kaya, it would be peanut butter with jam (Skippy!). Yeah, that might sound so disgusting for the most of you, but I tell ya, it was heaven for me!
 Slowly boiling the kaya mixture using the improvised double-boiler method

 All bottled-up! Now if only I can get the Germans to like Kaya, I could start a mini business!
 Close-up picture of the consistency of the Kaya. Other than the intense green, the texture and taste of the Kaya just screams out "Singaporean goodness!!!"
A breakfast that I really look forward to waking up to. I kid you not, when I say that it tastes better than any of those Kaya that I import directly from Singapore to Germany! 

Kaya Recipe: 


Ingredients:
- 5 eggs
- 550 grams sugar
- 500 ml Coconut milk
- 10 pieces Pandan leaves (or 1/2 tsp Pandan paste)

Instructions:

1. Process pandan leaves with 500ml of the coconut milk in a blender. Strain to discard pulp.
(OR: Skip this step and just add 1/2 tsp pandan paste to 500 ml coconut milk and blend). 

2. In a mixing bowl, lightly beat all the eggs.

3. Add sugar into beaten eggs. Use a hand whisk to stir mixture until all sugar dissolves.

4. Add coconut milk and pandan juice into egg mixture. Stir well.

5. Pour kaya mixture through a sieve into a stainless steel pot (to be used in the double-boiler method). 

6. Bring another pot of water to boil and place the stainless steel pot over the bigger pot. When the water is simmering (between low to medium heat), stir kaya occasionally for the first 25 minutes. When kaya starts to thicken, stir it every 5-10 minutes.

7. When kaya reaches the desired consistency, takes at least another 1 hour, remove it from the heat. Cool completely before storing it in a clean jar.

8. Keep refrigerated. Enjoy!

Notes:

- Make sure all the sugar dissolves before adding coconut milk.

- The purpose of pouring kaya mixture thorugh a sieve is to eliminate big air bubbles formed during the whisking process. Existence of air bublles will result in non-consistent or lumpy kaya.

- Kaya will turn thicker when it is cooled.

4 comments:

Gene said...

Great stuff Pris!
I also missed Kaya when I was in UK on exchange and actually managed to get a bottle of kaya from an asian minimart there.
The green is kinda intense, but it probably tastes heavenly!

Pris said...

Hey Gene!

Thanks! Yeah, the green is very intense cos the white colour from the coconut milk seemed to have evaporated after all that stirring.

The next time I will just put less pandan paste or omit the pandan leaves altogether. Yeah, but the taste is heavenly! Just that I got too much now! Haha.

Pris said...

Hi Pris,
It's me again :) I also miss the food that we sometimes take for granted in Sg. I have tried making kaya too. If you think that the green is strange, I suggest that you caramelise some of the sugar you want to use before mixing into the final mixture. It will then become brown.

Pris said...

Hey Pris!

Thanks for that nice tip! I think I will try that next time!!! Yeah, I do find it too green. But caramelising sugar can be quite tricky right?

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