Monday, August 29, 2016

Homemade Apam Merekah

This recipe was taken from a video shared on where else but Facebook. There are so many recipes that I plan to try and last Saturday, I made these Apam Merekah as I had already bought the ingredients earlier.

In my case, I only have three colours available in my pantry i.e. purple, cochineal (deep red) and green. The green bottle in the picture above is actually pandan emulco or pandan flavouring. The good thing is it is in green colour so it's a 2 in 1 food colouring and pandan flavour in one bottle. I did not bother buying the other flavours/essence because the recipe calls for the use of 1/2tsp only and to buy a whole bottle seems like a waste, unless you use them a lot or bakes a lot.
After mixing all the ingredients, I separated the batter into three. Obviously I did not bother to measure the amount to get the same weight. Add your colouring and/or flavours accordingly to the batter and mix. As for the colours pink and purple, I leave them plain with no flavouring. Remember earlier you already put 1tsp of vanilla essence so that will be fine. Make sure you put just a teeny bit of the food colouring. Although the recipe calls for 1/2 tsp, I added only a few drops, probably 2-3 drops because I want the apam to turn out in lovely soft pastel hues. If you watch the video, the apam turned out very bright. I prefer them to be in a softer shade but hey, whatever rocks your boat!
I have some cupcake liners but I did not have the aluminium casings to put them in and my muffin tin could not fit my steamer so I simply used a small size cupcake souffle liner. I like to use this type of cupcake liner because they stand firm and does not need to be put in a muffin tin. By the way, while you are preparing the batter, you can start boiling the water for the steamer.
Make sure you cover the lid with a clean cloth/muslin so that water doesn't drip onto your apam while steaming. Steam the apam for 7 minutes and once the time is up, carefully transfer them onto a rack to cool.
Close up of the cooked apam. Don't they crack really nicely? And I just love how lovely the colours turn out. The green apam has a tinge of pandan flavour to it. My kids love these apam so this recipe is a keeper. They are really easy to make and can be done in less than 1/2 hour. I packed some to bring to the hospital to visit my niece and left some at home which my kids had on Sunday morning.
For ease of reference and in the event you are not able to click or view the video or have difficulty understanding the Malay language used in the video, I hereby list down the ingredients and the steps.

INGREDIENTS:

  • 2 eggs
  • 200g sugar
  • 250g flour (wheat flour/all-purpose flour)
  • 1tsp ovalett- you can easily buy this in the baking needs aisle in the supermarket
  • 175g or 1 cup soda water
  • 1tsp vanilla essence
  • 1tsp pandan paste/essence
  • 1tsp yam paste/essence
  • 1tsp strawberry paste/essence
  • 1/2tsp green colouring
  • 1/2tsp red colouring
  • 1/2tsp purple colouring
  • 1/2tsp yellow colouring
METHOD:
  1. Beat eggs, sugar and ovalett until mixture turns pale white and fluffy.
  2. Add in flour alternate with soda water.
  3. Mix well and add vanilla essence.
  4. Once batter is ready, separate the batter according to your chosen colours/flavourings.
  5. Add your chosen colours/flavourings to each portion and mix.
  6. Pour in cupcake liners about 3/4 full so that you get the crack (merekah) effect.
  7. Steam for 7 minutes.

In case you are wondering, I used this soda water and that is how ovalett looks like.
Happy trying!
Credit goes to the owner of the recipe and the Facebook page for sharing the video.

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