Pulut Hitam Cake (aka PineGarden)

Have you tried the famous pulut hitam cake from Pine Garden? This is super yummy. I cooked a packet of black glutinous rice a while ago. After I cooked them I freeze some of them to use at a later stage. I have made pulut hitam chiffon, pulut hitam pudding cake, pulut hitam bread. I have in the pipe line to bake a pulut hitam roll cake also!

I had wanted to bake a 6inch sponge for this cake. Somehow it was such a disaster. Firstly, I used a non-stick push pan to bake one. I think it collapse in the oven even before I complete the baking. The bottom shrunk so badly with a deep concave. I tried baking another one the next day using a removable base tin that is not non-stick this time. I also used a different recipe. This one requires baking using top heating element first then both top and bottom. I had not use this function of this oven for at least 6-7 years. And today, using this option tripped the electricity when I was heating up the oven! What a disaster!

Since I had the batter ready, I decided to bake in my Philips Airfryer. This also turned into a messy affair as the cake rose too high and the top got burnt! So much so I had difficulty pulling out the drawer. It was also a nightmare to clean up the mess. So after removing the charred top, I manage to salvage some to make this still. Still feeling upset about the oven now!

Ingredients (adapted from qembardelites.wordpress.com)
3 egg yolks (I used 60g egg)
35g vegetable oil
50g milk
50g cake flour
a few drops vanilla extract
1/8 tsp salt
3 egg whites
35g castor sugar
1/8 tsp cream of tar tar

Directions
Add the milk and oil to the egg yolk and mix well. Add in the sifted flour and salt and mix till there is no lumps.

In another clean bowl whisk up the egg whites till it gets frothy, the add in the cream of tar tar and sugar. Continue to whisk till you get firm peaks. Add 1/3 of this meringue to the egg yoke mixture and mix well. Pour this back into the meringue bowl and mix gently till you don’t see any white streaks.

Pour this batter into the baking tin and knock it gently a few times on the table top to release any trapped air. Bake this in a pre- heated oven with water bath at 180d for 30mins top heat only. Then reduce to 160d for 50mins top & bottom heat .

Unmould as soon as possible and cool it completely on a rack before slicing into 2 pieces.

Ingredients for the cream(will have left over)
100g whipping cream
4-5 tbsp thick cooked sweetened pulut hitam *

1/2 tsp gelatin powder
10g water
* with added coconut cream
Directions
Bloom the gelatin with water and then use microwave oven to melt it or use double boil method over stove to dissolve the gelatin completely.

Add the melted gelatin into the pulut hitam mixture. Mix well and allow it to cool slightly.

I applied some rice cream on the chiffon cake before adding the pulut hitam cream on it. Then stack the other layer and apply cream followed by pulut hitam again. Let the cake set the fridge for about an hour before you cut to serve.

The taste is still not quite like pine garden’s, but I still quite like it. I will redo and fine tune this in future.

Purple Rice Bread

I had cooked a packet of black glutinous rice earlier. Used some to bake a glutinous rice layered pudding cake, and kept some in the freezer for some other “projects”. This is one recipe I archive and wanted to try. I reserved a batch of cooked purple glutinous rice flour for this. Cooked but not mushy like the usual black glutinous rice dessert. The grains are mainly still whole.

I got the recipe from morethanbread.net

Ingredients (I use my pullman tin 20cmX10cmX10cm)
Sponge
200g bread flour
275g water
3g yeast

Mix the above ingredients in a bowl and let it sit in room temperature for 1-2 hours or refrigerate overnight. I kept mine overnight.

Main Dough
All the sponge dough from above
200g bread flour
100g whole wheat flour
25g sugar
2g instant yeast
100-150g cooked purple glutinous rice (I used 150g)
5g salt
20g unsalted butter

Directions
Put all the ingredients in a mixer (except butter) and mix until it forms a rough dough. I used my BM to knead for 1 cycle. Then re-knead again and start adding butter in the second cycle until well incorporated and leave it to proof in the second cycle.

After the first proofing, de-gas the dough and divide the dough into 3 portions. Shape into balls and let it rest for 10mins. After the resting, roll the ball into a long oblong shape like a swiss roll, then pinch the seams to seal it. From the short end, flatten the piece out again and roll it up again like a swiss roll. Place this into your prepared tin. Repeat for the rest.

Allow this to prove till it reaches about 80% of the tin. It took about 25mins for me. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 170d for 30-35mins.

Remove the bread from the tin and allow it to cool completely before slicing.

Taste verdict
The bread is soft and chewy. Addition of the black glutinous rice did not impart any flavour but I think it is chewier. I find this bread uses a lot of flour 500g in total for a regular loaf size which I usually use 300-350g of flour.

Pulut hitam pudding chiffon

I have used black glutinous rice flour to bake pulut hitam chiffon various times. This time I am using the the cooked glutinous rice version. Yes this requires an additional step of cooking the pulut hitam porridge first. I did not record the recipe for cooking the pulut hitam porridge. I basically cooked the whole packet of 500g and kept some part of the rice when its cooked and continue boiling the rest into porridge. I did not add coconut cream to this nor any sugar to it.

Ingredients for the cake (adapted from lovingcreations4u.blogspot.com)
2 egg yolks (I used 60g eggs)
10g gula melaka, finely chopped
20g coconut oil
120g cooked pulut hitam
10g coconut cream
46g cake flour sieved
pinch of salt
3 egg whites
1/4 tsp cream of tar tar
30g caster sugar

I bake this in a removable base 6 inch round tin. Do not grease on line the tin. Mix the egg yolks with gula melaka, salt and coconut oil. Add in the coconut cream and cooked pulut hitam and continue to mix well. Mix in the cake flour and set this aside.

In another clean bowl, whisk the egg whites until frothy then add in the sugar in 2 additions and also the cream of tar tar. Continue to whisk till firm peaks. Add 1/3 of this into the yolk mixture until well combined. Pout this into the meringue and continue to fold gently until there is no more white streaks.

Pour the batter into the tin and bang the tin 2 to 3 times to remove any trapped air bubbles. Bake in a preheated oven at 160d for 50-60mins until an inserted skewer comes out clean. I took a longer time to bake as I baked mine in the 2nd lowest tier of the oven. Nonetheless I still get shrinkage and did not get 2 even layers of cake when I slice them later.

Once done, invert the cake to allow it to fully cool before you unmould and slice the cake into 2 sections.

Ingredients for the Pulut hitam pudding layer
A)
240g pandan water (boil 500g of water with a few pandan leaves)
20g gula melaka
15g sugar
40g coconut cream
3 tsp agar powder
B)
2 tbsp hwoen kueh flour (mung bean flour)
40g pandan water
C)
220g cooked pulut hitam

Directions
Prepare the tools for assembly before you cook this pudding. Mix all the ingredients in B above and set aside. Place all the ingredients in A in a pot and bring to a gentle boil, stirring it frequently to ensure the agar powder is melted.

Stir B again and pour in into A and let it come to a gentle boil, while continuing to stir the mixture. Add in C and allow this to boil as you continue to stir.

I am using back the same removable 6 inch cake mould. Ladle 2 or 3 spoonful of the pudding into this mould. Place a piece of the chiffon onto this. Then ladle another 2 to 3 spoonful over this, you may need more spoonfuls. Ensure the sides of the cakes are also covered with the pudding. Place the second piece of chiffon over this and pour the rest of the pudding over it. If you do not have enough pudding for the last layer, like me, just try to fill the gap of the last layer of chiffon and the cake mould instead of trying to cover the top of the cake. This top will be the bottom of the cake when we unmould.

Leave the cake to cool for a while then keep in the fridge overnight to allow the pudding to set properly before you slice.

I like this cake. As I cooked the pulut hitam without adding sugar or coconut milk, I find my pudding layer not as fragrant as it should be. Also my pudding layer can be a little bit sweeter. The chiffon layer was a bit sweet for me so I will cut down on the sugar here if I increase the sugar for the pudding layer.

Pulut Hitam Chiffon II

This is a very Asain type of flavour. Using black glutinous rice powder. I have tried to make many versions of this but I did not record down the taste difference. Most call for a mixture of cake flour and black glutinous rice flour. And mostly added a extra egg white. I think it is probably to make the cake softer. I have also tried making one with 100% black glutinous rice flour and the cake texture is kind of denser as in it have more bite than your usual chiffon cake. Today I am baking the version with an extra egg white since I have one egg white to clear after baking sakura cookie last night.

Ingredients
6 egg yolks
60g coconut oil
140g milk
1/2 tsp salt
80g black glutinous rice flour
40g cake flour
7 egg whites
100g castor sugar
1/2 tsp cream of tartar

Directions
In a mixing bowl, mix the egg with coconut oil. Then add in the milk followed by sifted flour. This yolk mixture is quite runny. I think I will reduce the milk portion to 100-110g next time.

In another clean bowl, whisk the egg whites adding sugar in gradually. Add in the cream of tar tar once the egg whites are frothy. Whisk till stiff peaks.

Add 1/3 of the meringue to the yolk mixure and mix well. Pour this back to the meringue mixture and fold well until you don’t see any white streaks.

Bake in a pre-heated over at 170d for 60-75mins until well cooked. Remove from oven and invert it to cool. Unmould the cake once it is cool.

As I am using an extra egg white the resultant cake is quite a tall one. Texture is very soft and fine.

Pulut Hitam Chiffon I

This sounds like a special flavour to try and super yummy. I finally manage to get a bag of black glutinous rice flour and I have tried various online recipes, using different amounts of black glutinous flour to cake flour, some uses 1 extra egg white.

I find that cake using more black glutinous rice flour has a stronger flavour but the cake’s texture is not as fine/fluffy like a normal chiffon cake. Maybe that why some recipe calls for an extra egg white. I did not record all the Pulut hitam chiffons I baked therefore am not able to make a record of the differences in detail.

This cake is my latest bake so I want write this down for my future reference. My recipe is adapted from here. I had to tweak it according to the ingredients I have on hand. In fact I realised the new bag of flour I had says “cooked black glutinous flour”. I am not too sure if it’s the same as “black glutinous flour” and whether it will work. But I did manage to get a decent looking chiffon cake.

Pulut hitam Chiffon cake

Ingredients

140g Black glutinous

25g cake flour

6 egg yolks

30g sugar

1/2 tsp salt

140g coconut cream (as I had only 80g coconut cream I top up the balance with milk)

6 egg whites

70g sugar

1/2 tsp cream of tar tar

Method

Separate the egg whites from yolk and set aside.

Sieve the black glutinous flour and cake flour.

Beat the yolks with the 30g sugar until light then add in oil and whisk until well combined. Add in the coconut cream mixture. Lastly, add the flour mixture and mix untill well incorporated. If the mixture gets lumpy, like mine, you have to sieve away the lumps.

In another bowl, use an electric whisk to whisk the egg whites, when its frothy add the sugar in 3 additions and cream of tar tar. Continue to whisk till almost stiff peak.

Add 1/3 of the egg whites in to the yolk mixture using a spatula. Taking care to do it gently and not overmix or deflate the meringue. Add the balance 2/3 and mix well. Pour into a 23cm chiffon tin.

You do not need to grease the tin.

Gently tap the tin on the table to release any trapped air bubble. Bake in a preheated oven at 160 degrees for 60-65mins or until cooked. I baked till almost 70mins. At this temperature, I only experienced a slight crack.

Remove pan from oven and invert it to cool. Wait for it to cool completely before unmoulding. I notice this cake doesn’t keep well at room temperature unlike other chiffon cakes. Best to store in a airtight box inside the fridge once it cool down.

Enjoy.

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