蒸雞蛋糕

My 3rd attempt at making this.
New recipe, and I did it in a proper steamer. Those with the 'pong pong' lid.

A lil sidetrack before the recipe....Been hinting to The Wife about getting a steamer so that i can carry on experimenting and getting this right. So she gave in and we headed down to Richmond to look for one. we found it at a shop called BaoBao Kitchenware. cost us $47 (28 cm wide, 3 tiered) but we got a traffic fine for $117 (for not understanding that it's clearway and we can't park beyond 4.30pm even tho we'd bought a ticket that shld've lasted us till 4.50pm. 4 mths here and we're still paying an average of 1 fine/mth to learn the aussie traffic rules) so that effectively made it the most expensive kitchenware we've ever bought. The Wife had the honour of using it for her steamed glutinous rice first. It was not until a month later that I'd gotten down to use it for the cake.

Adapted this from Fenying's Blog but i find it a tad bit too sweet. I still haven't quite gotten it to be fluffy. maybe it's due to the normal cake flour & raw sugar i'd used + me not quite sure i've gotten the 'folding in the flour' technique right.

ingredients:

• 3 egg (must let them thaw till room temperature before use, else they dun beat that well)
  
• 230 g sugar (i think you can reduce this to 200g)
• 230g Hong Kong flour (can't find it here. HK flour is a highly bleached flour that's used to make pau. i used cake flour so i figured thats why it ain't fluffy and was instead a bit crumbly)
• 75g 7-up (i used Fanta orange. I read somewhere that in my grandma's day, they used fanta orange. i suspect there aint any difference to the taste/ colour...hmmm maybe just a bit more yellowish.)
  

recipe:

• beat eggs at high speed till fluffy (it shld be about twice the volume you started off with. the colour will change from yolkish to creamy in the final fluffy state)
• add in sugar gradually and continue beating till well- blended. Remove processor
• sift and fold in the flour into the mix in 3 portions. each time ensure that you dun see flour lumps before you add in the next portion. the mixture turned out to be very sticky at this point
  
• add in the 7-up/fanta orange and mix well. this will give the mixture a smoother consistency. however i am not sure if when you shld stop mixing and if the fizziness has anything to do with the fluffiness of the cake
• pour mixture into a 20cm wide baking pan / steaming basket (i think you can go for muffin trays and make mini versions which will probably look better)
  
• sprinkle a handful of sugar such that it forms a cross on the surface of mixture. this will allow it to crack when it rises (發!) it worked for mine but cos my pan was tall, the mixture didn't 發 significantly to make a nice bloom. apparently you can use also create the lines using a spatula dipped in oil (i cant rem where i read this from)
  
• steam at high heat for half an hour
• DO NOT OPEN the lid immediately. keep the lid on for about another 10 minutes so that it won't collapse.

i'm happy that this turned out much better than the previous attempts, at least it cooked through and had not collapsed.

The Wife still cldn't understand why i persist on making this (ok, she's not a fan of this in the 1st place) but my take is that if you can't find it, try to learn how to make it. Think i'd probably be eating the cake all by myself.