Patron Exclusive Recipe #10 Cantonese "Crystal Cake" with Custard Filling (奶黄水晶饼)

Hey guys, hope you are doing well! This week, let's use some of the custard filling we made last week and turn it into a sort of old-school dim sum, steamed crystal cake (水晶饼).

Let's get started.

  **Ingredients**  

1. Wheat starch, 250g.

2. Gelatin powder. 5g. If using sheets, take 5g and soak in cold water till soft, then dissolve in the hot water.  Gelatin is to help adding some binding quality to the wheat starch dough.

3. Water, 400g.

4. Sugar, 75g.

5. Cudstard filling (Recipe's here). I used about 120g, but it really depends on the size of your cake.

6. Matcha powder. 10g. Totally optional, I like the fragrance and colour of it and I happen to have some on hand, so I added it to my cake.

 **Process**  

1. Sieve the wheat starch into a big bowl, then sieve in the matcha powder if using, mix well.

2. Bring the water to a boil, add in the gelatin powder/sheet, stir well.

3. After the gelatin is dissolved, gradually pour the water into the wheat starch while stirring it. Just like we did in har gow. (Same idea here, we need to cook the wheat starch before wrapping.)

4. And just like what we did in har gow, now we need to cover the dough and let it sit for 5 minutes to cook.

5. Five minutes later. Take out the dough onto a slik pad or a smooth surface. Now we'll need to knead in the sugar. So add in the sugar bit by bit, keep knead, till it's all incorporated and became a smooth dough. 

(Sugar in)

(Knead. It'll be quite sticky and take a bit, just be patient.)

(A smooth dough)

6. Now let's talk cake moulds. I'm using these lovely wooden Chinese cake moulds to shape them. I figured you won't have one, So I'll also include another way to shape it using cling wrap. Or you can be imaginative and play around with your baking moulds.

7. Before using the wooden moulds, we'll need to oil it. Just brush a thin layer in it, covering every corner and slits

8. Now take a piece of your dough. It really depends on your mould size, mine is a 50g mould, so I'm using 35g dough and 15g filling.

You can use some dough and try to fill up whatever mould that you're using, then weigh the dough that's enough to fill the mould, in which about a third of the weigh would be the filling and the rest would be the weigh of the dough.

So measure out each portion, roll it into a ball, then press it in your palm. Put the filling on it. Then roll it into a ball like what we did in making Tangyuan. (I'm so glad that we have videos that I can refer to).

(Wrapper and filling)

(Into a big ball)

9. After rolling it into a ball, we can put it in the oiled mould. Gently pressing it to fill all the room in order to get the pattern.

10. Gently knock the mould on the counter (cake side down), then the cake will slide out pretty easily because we already oiled the mould. Or gently pill off the mould if you're using silicon ones.

Repeat to finish the rest of the dough, remember to oil the mould each time before you put in the dough.

11. Now, if you don't have any mould but still want to make it. You can still shape it.

First, you can just roll the cake into a ball and just move onto Step 12, steaming.

Or, you can also grab a cling wrap, put the dough in, take the four corner of the cling wrap, wrap it up, then start twisting, till it's very tight. Unwrap, then you'll have a little bun shape cake with a pointed tip.

If going for this cling wrap method, try to keep the whole cake's size smaller (max like 30g would be good). Because the shape will make the wrapper thicker, and thicker wrapper would be difficult to cook through and affects the texture.

(Put the dough inside)

(Keep twisting)

(Unwrap, and you got a little bun shape cake.)

12. After shaping, we can steam. Put them on an lightly oiled plate, steam on high for 10-20 minutes, depending on the size.

For mine, they're about 40g-50g ones and took 20 minutes to cook through.

Always watch for water level when steaming, water just evaporates so fast. Add hot water in the steaming pot/wok when needed.

13. After steaming, take out the plate, drain any water that may be collected in the plate, let it cool down. Then it'll be ready to serve. 

Update on 3rd May on storage: Keeps well in fridge in a dry air-tight container for 4 days. No need to reheat when serving if it's at room temperaute. If it's taken out from the fridge, quickly re-steam it for 3-5 minutes, or pan fry it on a non-stick pan with a little bit of oil till you see a very slight golden brown on both sides. 

If not using matcha, it'll be white and opaque, like this.

So right, this a relatively simple and fun dim sum dish to make. The slightly al-dente texture and the sweet filling makes a pretty good snack to munch on. Now we have another sweet dim sum to serve on a dim sum party~ Hope you like it, and see you next week.