SWEET TREATS

When we first arrived in Ruve St, Samabula, we agreed to rent out our spacious 4 bedroom unit as it was - unfurnished. We have since bought a fridge, a washing machine, beds, furniture, cupboards and one disgustingly ugly dining table. Our house is now complete, however, we still have one missing household item: an oven.

We lack an oven on Ruve St, Samabula. In addition to this, one of my housemates is gluten intolerant and in a country where food allergies are far and few between, there are limited gluten-free options. Lauren (the "intolerant") usually gets by in Australia by baking her own food with gluten-free modifications. So naturally, she was desperate to purchase an oven asap.

And then I remembered the myriad of Malaysian recipes that mum and popo used to use in Malaysia when ovens were expensive. Most of these cakes and sweets were steamed rather than baked. So I proceeded to ask mum to email me recipes that she had in her cookbook.

Lauren bought a large bamboo steamer from an asian grocer just over a week ago. She has since made chocolate and sweet potato brownies and one awesome batch of savoury muffin/was-meant-to-be-a-quiche.

Today, we got busy in the kitchen and this was the result:

POPO's STEAMED CAKE

- 3/4 cup of white sugar + 4 eggs, beaten like MAD until pale
- Dash of vanilla essence and 3 tablespoons of milk
- 1 cup of flour - sifted twice (if you're my mum, you "shift" them twice, and if you're Manda in Fiji, you whirl it round with a balloon whisk because you forgot to purchase a sieve).

Steamed for 20 minutes in teacups.





PEANUT AND BLACK SESAME ONDE ONDE from "Poh's Kitchen"
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/pohskitchen/stories/s2895228.htm





STEAMED TAVIOCA CAKE
(Tapioca/Cassava/but "Tavioca" is the Fijian word)

1.5kg of grated Tavioca
600g grated coconut with 2 cups of coconut cream squeezed out from it
2 beaten eggs
a tsp of butter
2 tsp evaporated milk
Dash of vanilla essence (was meant to be Pandan but couldn't figure out the Fijian equivalent)
300g sugar
1/4 tsp salt

All mixed in a pot together and heated through until thick

Steamed for 40 minutes

This cake was cheap to make, given the availability and freshness of the ingredients. I also managed to crack open the coconuts all by myself!!! The flip side was that it took AGES to grate the coconut and tavioca. Lauren is currently napping after all of her hard effort!



It's completely strange but I feel more Malaysian than ever after today...but I'm in Fiji! Special thanks to Mum for the recipes. Suddenly I feel a sense of connection to Mum, Popo and their homeland just through cooking these sweets today. Whoever thought that I would need to be dumped in the middle of the Pacific to ever make this discovery?