It’s no secret how much we Singaporean love our kueh, whether it’s the snaking queues during festivities or the countless versions of kueh-flavoured cakes and desserts. Though there’s a fair share of incredibly intricate creations, you’ll also find plenty of simple kueh recipes to try yourself as you whip up these sweet and savoury treats from home.
The word ‘kueh‘, loosely meaning ‘cake’, similar to the western cake dessert you see on the counter. We have all kinds of kueh, from steamed, fried, baked, to yeasted and more. This time we gather our top 8 favourite kueh that we like making at home.
Hong Kong Egg Tart
First up on our list is one of our favourites, not to mention it can be baked easily at home. Hong Kong Egg Tart is one of our favourite pastries of all time! During our childhood, we kept on craving it every week. We kept on pestering our mom to get some for us, especially those from Tai Chong Kok which is just a street away from where we stay. It got sold out in 30 minutes once they are out of the oven. All you need to prepare the base and custard, it can be simply prepared and made as a snack in an hour.
Nyonya Kueh Pie Tee
We were always beyond thrilled when we popped this cute pie tee inside my mouth. It’s been so long! The memory of us as a kid eating this just flashed right in front of me! So good and satisfying!
Kueh Pie Tee doesn’t take much skill if you follow the steps here – that is, use ready-made Kueh Pie Tee cups. Now that you have the shells and the filling, it’s time to put them together. Please do not assemble ahead of time as the filling will make the pie tee shells turn soggy. Only prepare as many as you want to serve and serve immediately. Top the pie tee shells with turnip filling. A few strips of the omelette strips and sprinkle some prawn on top and then garnish with 1-2 cilantro leaves.
Water Chestnut Kueh
Have you ever encountered Chinese water chestnut cake in dim sum halls? They look yellow and transparent and present a sweet taste. This Chinese Water Chestnut Cake is unique in its taste. It’s subtle. It’s not a jelly though it has the translucent characteristics of jelly when hot. And it’s not a cake at all either. Its texture is harder than jelly and it’s not too sweet and there is the wonderful crunchy fresh sweetness of the water chestnut bits.
While it required more time compared to many of the other kueh, from the peeling and chopping of the water chestnut. We can reassure you that the rest of the steps are simple after you get a hang of it.Teochew Red Bean Spiral Thousand Layer Mooncake- Pastry-style mooncakes are filled with sweetened red bean paste and made with coconut oil instead of lard and colored with natural juice from blue pea flowers. Ultra flaky crust you will absolutely love!
Crispy Taro Mooncake
Teochew Taro Thousand Layer Mooncake – Pastry-style mooncakes are filled with sweetened taro paste and made with lard and coloured with sweet potato powder. Ultra flaky crust you will absolutely love! While who say we only can have for mooncake during the mid-autumn festival? Now that you can easily make it at home you can enjoy it anytime you like.
Traditional Mooncakes
Likewise, the traditional mooncake is up on our kueh list. It is so classic that we couldn’t give it a miss. However, conventionally it is made from red bean or lotus seed paste is surrounded by a thin crust and may contain salted duck eggs yolks. But we decide to make a change, infuse coffee into the mooncake. Are you excited to try out this Coffee Lotus Mooncake? Click to find out how you can do so.
Sticky Rice Dumpling
Leaf-wrapped kueh is one of the most tricky kueh to be made as the kueh is hidden in the leaf, you wouldn’t know if the kueh was done only until you unwrapped it. Prepare yourself when you want to give this a try, when we first started making it we are intimate we the steps required to make one dumpling. But Sticky Rice Dumplings can come in sweet or savoury, unlike the savoury ones, the plain or sweet one is rather easy to achieve for a beginner like us.
Ang Ku Kueh
Ang Ku Kueh is a tortoise shaped glutinous rice snack that is famous in Singapore and other Asian countries. It is filled with freshly made mung bean paste and placed on a piece of the banana leaf before steaming. There’re various types of filling for ang ku kueh. The most popular ones are mung bean paste and ground peanuts. The skin, made with glutinous rice flour, should be thin and softly chewy.
Turnip Cake
Almost 80% of the kueh mentioned have a sweet based, but savoury cakes play a huge part in our diets which we hope that more people get to know more about them. And Turnip Cake comes to our mind right away. Making Lo Bak Ko is fairly easy hence it contains many prep works, so if you are doing it alone it considers a 4 stars tough level. So we highly recommend you make it in a huge group when everyone is involved it makes things simple and time-saving. Making turnip cake is equivalent to Korean making kimchi.
We hope that you like our Top 8 kueh that can be made at home. Give this recipe a try and don’t forget to tag us on Instagram as @leplaincanvas and use the #byplaincanvas hashtag. I love seeing your takes on my recipes!
xoxo, Joe
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