Kaya

A group of my friends will be gathering at my place for brunch. We try to meet once a month. And every gathering we have a theme. This month of May, Janet had some vouchers for bagels. She is very kind to use her voucher to get us 12 yummy bagels from Einstein Bagels near our place. Therefore, she suggested the theme to be "Spreads" to go with the bagels. I have decided to make Kaya.

This is my third attempt. Each attempt seems to be better, looks like I have get a hang on how to make the correct consistency.  The first try it ended up pretty lumpy. I guess I was too impatient and had the water bath too hot so the eggs in the kaya mixture became cooked and thus lumpy. The second try I used another recipe and decided to sieve the mixture. It is less lumpy than the first try but still not as good as I would love it to be. This time I train myself to be more patient in stirring continuously under slightly lower heat of the water bath.

This batch of kaya I have used less brown sugar cos I had run out of it and had to use white caster sugar. I prefer to use brown sugar as it gives the kaya a richer flavour. I could only get frozen or especially old pandan leaves here. I have tried to use both to make kaya before but it does not give that nice pandan aroma. This time I did not have the time to buy it at chinatown therefore I use pandan paste and pandan leaves extract. I think the result is about the same as using fresh pandan leaves. Of cos using fresh natural leaves are still better than using pandan paste as they are natural.

Ingredients (Adapted from Nasi Lemak lover's website)

1  3 large eggs (lightly beaten)

2  250g caster sugar (can reduce to 200 if you don’t like it too sweet. I prefer to use brown sugar)

3  350ml coconut milk (I can only get canned coconut cream here so I use that)

4  8pcs pandan leaves (I use pandan paste and pandan leaves extract) 

Steps:

1  Mixture A - Blend pandan leaves and coconut milk in a blender. Strain to discard pulp. (I skip this step and added pandan paste into the coconut milk. )

2  Mixture B - Add sugar into beaten eggs, use a hand whisk to stir mixture until sugar dissolves (Do not beat but lightly stir !!)

3  Add mixture A into mixture B became kaya mixture. Stir and mix well.

4  Sift the kaya mixture into another mixing bowl (stainless steel preferred).

5  Place mixing bowl over another pot of boiled water on low heat (real small bubbles bubbling will do. The 1st time I make i think the water is too hot and the kaya becomes lumpy), stir kaya mixture occasionally.(Do not stop too long, 1-2mins intervals)

6 It took at least 1hour to cook till desired thickness.(I took around 30-45 minutes though) Cool completely before store in a clear jar and keep in the fridge.

This is the kaya I made for the first time. Using brown sugar gives it a brown colour.