Philip Chia

If you enjoy cooking food from Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia and find yourself at a loss for an appropriate dessert, this cookbook provides a plethora of options. Therefore, this book will be quite a boon for adventurous cooks.

The downside for those of us who live in the United States is that, in spite of the statement that both metric and American measures are used, only metric measures are given. (Oooops! The probably explanation is that this wording was just blindly copied from other works. Tsk tsk. Get on the ball, editors!) Many of my recent cookbook acquisitions have been published by Marshall Cavendish, and the failure to include American measures makes cooking from them more offputting than it would otherwise be. (Marshall Cavendish and other publishers might note that this translates into a loss of sales for them!)

This book includes recipes for the multilayered and colorful desserts that emanate from Malaysian, Singapore, and Indonesia. Although the desserts won’t be as visually spectacular, I will either omit the coloring or use natural coloring when their flavor would not be an issue. Two of the colorings in this book are natural: blue pea flour (bunga telang, which most of us will not be able to find) and pandan paste.

The recipes in this cookbook range from easy to somewhat tedious to make because of the layering.

I am not going to make an exhaustive list of the recipes that catch my eye, because all of them do. Instead... kueh**** (various sorts). Also: kueh talam berlauk*** (steamed savory rice cake—along the same lines as turnip cake aka radish cake aka daikon cake but different—with chiles, cilantro, coconut cream, and a bit of sugar); kueh dadar (pandan pancakes*** with grated coconut filling; or stuffed pandan pancakes***); kueh bangkek (coconut cookies made with cornstarch and tapioca flour); kueh ambon (honeycomb cake; very different; includes yeast; mixture is proofed but not kneaded; judging when the batter is adequately proofed may be an issue, especially on one’s maiden voyage); baked tapioca and durian cake (perhaps the ideal dessert for durian fans); bubor cha cha (xref: bubor chacha; red sweet potato and colored tapioca in coconut milk syrup); sweet potato, yam and banana in coconut and palm sugar syrup.… (mehr)