It’s a great honor to have Madam Kwong of Madam Kwong’s Kitchen guest posting on Nyonya Food today.
Raised in Penang, Madam Kwong is a retired Nyonya chef currently based in Australia. I have been a secret fan of Madam Kwong’s Kitchen—her gorgeous blog with many authentic and delicious Nyonya/Malaysian recipes.
Please welcome Madam Kwong and her daughter Suz (the photographer) to Nyonya Food with her kuih benka or tapioca/cassava cake recipe. Kuih Bengka is a very delicious Nyonya kuih, one of my late grandmother’s specialties and also my personal favorite. Enjoy!
Firstly, I wish to thank Nyonya Food for inviting me to guest post in her amazing blog. I was so excited when she emailed me and am truly honored. We share something in common, well, besides cooking, speaking the same language or the love of food.
We are both from our beautiful island of Penang, Malaysia.
She wanted me to “cook up” a Nyonya dish. The choice of Nyonya cooking is vast and hard but this recipe is very simple. Oh! She did hint she wanted a kuih. So, I whipped up Kuih Bengka. My daughter, the amateur photographer, Suz took the photos and soon enough ate most of the kuihs.
In the past where there was no electricity, Nyonyas used charcoal to bake Kuih Bengka (Cassava). The top of the kuih would become dark brown.
These days, you can still get the same top crusty effect in a fan forced oven which is caused by the baking process. The kuih is light yellow in colour and has a sweetly scented coconut flavor.
You can even bite into the grated coconut. I used the old fashion wooden coconut grater to grate the coconut in this recipe. Ahhh! Life is hard, knowing that you can buy frozen grated coconut. This is an easy recipe to make and hope you try it as well.
We do hope we’re able to spread the Peranakan culture to the world.
Kuih Bengka Recipe ( Tapioca/Cassava Cake)
Kuih Bengka (Tapioca/Cassava Cake)
Ingredients
- 1 kg finely grated cassava, tapioca
- 4 cups sugar
- 1 tin coconut milk and add water to make 1 litre in total
- 3 tablespoons plain flour
- 250 grams freshly grated coconut
Directions
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1Mix the grated cassava, grated coconut and flour in a large mixing bowl.
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2Heat up the coconut milk together with sugar. When the sugar starts to melt, add this mixture into the combined cassava mix. Use a balloon whisk to stir thoroughly.
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3Lastly pour into a 8”X 8”X 3” tin, either lined with grease proof paper (baking paper) or banana leaves.
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4Bake in the oven at 180 degrees Celsius for 2 hours.
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Chin
Hi,
How much coconut milk is needed? It’s not stated in the recipe.
Thank you.
Koh Karyn
Sorry but someone must have edited the recipe. Ingredients shown are 1kg finely grated cassava, 4 cups sugar, 1 tin Method…. It doesn’t make sense. Can u please rectify the error. Thanks
Rasa Malaysia
This has always been the recipe. It’s never been changed.
Wong Sharon
How much flour do I need? I don’t seem to see the number of grams mentioned. Thanks.
Rasa Malaysia
You only need 3 tablespoons flour. Click on Jump to Recipe for the recipe.
wern
Hi there,
Can I replace plain flour with any other type of flour instead? :) thanks!
Rasa Malaysia
No.
Ann Ang
Normal measuring cup, n the liquid measurement is too much too, I refer to others recipes, only 300+-sugar, n coconut milk only 2 cup, how the cake form if there’re too much liquid? But I must say the kueh is nice, besides too sweet, n kueh became bran curd. I follow your recipe, n I actually already cut down 1/3 of the sugar,
any way thanks for sharing.
Rasa Malaysia
I had tried this recipe before a few years ago and had no problem. I am not sure what went wrong and I don’t remember it being too sweet and it was not wet for sure. I am sorry but I am not sure what went wrong.
Ann Ang
This is my 1st experience of failing using recipe on line, all my efforts n money were wasted.
1 kg of tapioca with 4 cups of sugar were soooo sweet n l litre of liquid were too much, the kuih just can’t form, was very disappointed with the recipe, people who wants to use this recipe please think twice.
Rasa Malaysia
Hi Ann, I am not sure what happened. This recipe works as I have personally tried it with success. What kinds of cups are you using?
susan clarke
In Barbados & Caribbean we call.this pone,..we.add.raisins.and leave out the coconut milk and flour. I guess you can also use cassava.flour as it is gluten free.
We also finely.grate.the cassava, squeeze out excess.liquid allow to dry add sugar and make bakes (pancakes).
Grace
how sweet is this recipe? 4 cups of sugar just sounds a lot. That is like 1kg of sugar, right?
Grace
Also do you have the fan on for baking at 180 degrees for 2 hours? Look forward to your advice. :)
Rasa Malaysia
The recipe is correct, it’s supposed to be sweet but you can cut down. I am not sure about fan my oven has no fan and I don’t have to turn the fan on or off.
Grace
Thanks for the reply. I cut down on the sugar and because my oven is fan forced, I had it at 170 degrees and the cake was already golden brown after 1hr. I monitored it for another 30min before taking it out of the oven. Thanks for sharing your recipe. :)
alexnut
Hello! May I use tapioca flour instead of grated tapioca?
Otherwise, are there other uses of tapioca flour, apart from the brazilian cheeseballs?
THANK YOU!!!
Rasa Malaysia
Sorry you can’t. Just keep making the Brazilian cheeseballs.
Yen
I had a recipy years ago that has butter in it and it very tasty but I forgot the whole recipy. Try to search few of recipy similar but no luck. Do you have the one with butter in it?
Monica
Hi,
Thanks for the recipe.
I am just wonder how come you dont added eggs and water ?
Rasa Malaysia
No egg in the recipe. Water is added to coconut milk.
andrea70
Hi,
1 tin coconut =how many ml..how u grated de cassava..
Thanks
Rasa Malaysia
400 ml coconut milk.
Rasa Malaysia
I bought frozen grated cassava.
cristine
hi :), where to buy frozen cassava here malaysia. thank you
Rasa Malaysia
Buy fresh cassava instead.
Rebecca
Hi Bee, I have a few plants of Tapioca in my garden, so I often make Kuih Bengka. I never line the tin, in fact at the end of baking, I will place it onto the bottom so that the heat will brown the base too. We don’t add colouring — the stall one, they added yellow colouring. So I add in 1/2 brown sugar, 1/2 sugar if the brown sugar is not sold in packet, I will boil it up with the 2nd squeeze of coconut milk and pandan leaves then sieve it in case it has some sugar cane fibre in it. I will add in all ingredients and cook in the wok to thick then pour into a greased tin, smooth the top with some oil and bake. I never add in freshly grated coconut, may be I will try the next time.
Rasa Malaysia
Thanks for your tips Rebecca!