tapioca cake

This easy to make gluten free Kuih Bingka Ubi Kayu (Baked Tapioca Cake) is a Nyonya tea time treat. It is moist, tender, fragrant, and super delicious.

Kuih Bingka Ubi Kayu (Baked Tapioca Cake)

coconut milk ((14 oz /400 milliliters))

sugar ((210 grams))

pandan leaves ((shredded and knotted))

tapioca

eggs ((lightly beaten))

tbsp butter ((melted) (28 grams))

banana leaf (to line baking pan (optional))

Combine coconut milk, sugar, and pandan leaves in a small saucepan. Bring to a simmer over medium low heat. Stir to dissolve sugar. Turn off stove and allow coconut milk mixture to cool.

Grease or line a 8½ x 4½ x 2½ inch or 9¼ x 5¼ x 3 inch loaf pan with banana leaf. Pre-heat oven to 375°F (190°C).

In a large bowl, combine grated tapioca, eggs, and melted butter. Pour in coconut milk mixture. Stir to incorporate all the ingredients.

Pour mixture into prepared pan. Bake for 1 hour 30 minutes or until the top is a light golden brown color. Remove and allow cake to cool before cutting and serving.

Cassava Flour (Tapioca) Cake Pudding Recipe: An unusual ingredient for cake, but this chewy, spiced delight is well worth trying. Perfect for celiacs too.

Cassava Flour (Tapioca) Pudding Recipe

butter (salted) (, at room temperature, divided)

brown sugar (+ 4 tablespoons, divided)

tapioca ((cassava flour, see notes!) [Amazon affiliate link])

milk (whole

vegetable oil

egg (medium)

salt

cinnamon powder

clove powder

ginger powder

Get ready

Get ready: Heat the oven to 300 ºF [150 ºC]. Grease a 9&quot; [22 cm] baking pan with 2 tablespoons of butter, covering the bottom very well. Cover the bottom of the pan with 4 tablespoons of brown sugar. Set aside.

Mix ingredients: In a bowl mix the remaining butter, brown sugar, tapioca, milk, oil, egg, salt, cinnamon, clove and ginger. Whisk until it is mixed thoroughly. Pour carefully into the pan, making sure not to disturb the sugar layer.

Bake

Bake: Cook in preheated oven for 20 mins, or until you poke it with a skewer and it comes out clean. Cool to room temperature and chill. Loosen the edges with a knife, cover with a plate that can hold the syrup and turn.

Serve

Serve: Cool to room temperature before serving.

This tapioca thousand layer cake is a classic southern Chinese dish. Known for its beautiful layers, this steamed cake is lightly sweet, chewy, and moist. Serve it as a snack or dessert!

Tapioca Thousand Layer Cake (菱粉糍/千層糕)

sugar

(945 milliliters) water (divided)

tapioca flour

kansui (optional)

sesame seeds

unsweetened coconut

steaming rack

Snap the brown sugar slabs in half and add them to a saucepan. Pour 2 1/2 cups of water over the sugar slabs and bring the water to boil. Continue simmering the liquid until the sugar slabs dissolve completely. If you’re using light brown sugar, add it to the saucepan, along with 2 1/2 cups of water. Bring the water to boil and turn off the heat. The sugar should dissolve once the water boils.

Add the tapioca flour and 1 1/2 cups of room temperature water to a mixing bowl. Try to stir the flour and water together. The flour at the bottom of the bowl will feel very stiff and that’s okay. Stop stirring if it feels like the flour is stuck.

Once the brown sugar has dissolved, turn off the heat. Pour 1/3 of the hot sugar liquid into the bowl with the tapioca flour slurry and stir. The batter should be much easier to mix now. Pour the remainder of the brown sugar liquid into the bowl and mix again. Make sure to use your wooden spoon or spatula to scrape the bottom of the mixing bowl to ensure that there are no clumps of flour stuck there.

Make Batter

Add a steaming rack into the center of a large wok. Fill the wok with water, until there’s about a 1/2-inch gap between the water level and the top of the steaming rack. Cover the wok and bring the water to boil.

Lightly grease the pan with any neutral oil (such as vegetable oil). Once the water boils, carefully place the greased pan over the steaming rack. Reduce the heat to medium.

Set Up Steaming Station

Give the batter a stir because the tapioca flour sinks to the bottom of the bowl within minutes. Pour 2/3 cup of batter into the pan. The batter should cover the bottom of the pan completely. If it doesn’t, pour more batter into the pan. Cover the wok with a lid and steam for 4 minutes over medium heat.

Uncover the pan. Make sure the layer is completely translucent and you can see the bottom of the pan. This is an indication that the batter is fully cooked. Pour another 2/3 cup of batter into the pan, cover the wok with a lid, and steam for another 4 minutes.

Continue steaming the cake layer by layer, giving the batter a stir before adding 2/3 cup of it into the pan. Again, the batter should cover the entire surface of the pan. If it doesn’t, add more. Layers 3 to 5 will take about 5 minutes to steam, and layers 7 to 9 will take about 6 minutes. As the cake gets thicker, the latter layers will take longer to turn translucent. If at any point, the cake looks opaque, do not add more batter to the pan. Make sure the layer turns translucent completely. Otherwise, the opaque layer will stay that way even if you continue steaming the cake. (See blog post for more in-depth explanation.) Replenish the water in the wok when you get to about layer 5, as the water evaporates over time.

Steam Cake

Once all the layers have been steamed, turn off the heat. There will likely be a lot of water over the top layer, which is due to the condensation that develops inside the wok. Holding on to the pan with dry towels or oven mitts, carefully tip the pan and drain the water. Be careful because the cake can slide around.

Sprinkle some toasted sesame seeds and coconut over the top of the cake for garnish. It’s better to sprinkle the toppings while the cake is still warm to ensure that they stick onto the cake.

Let the cake cool completely before slicing and serving.

Finish Cake

There are several ways to cut into the cake. The easiest thing to do is to run a silicone spatula along the edge of the pan to loosen the cake. Then, use kitchen scissors to cut the cake into pieces.

Alternatively, you can cut the cake on a chopping board. Don’t cut the cake over a wooden or bamboo board, as the cake will stick to the board and be difficult to pry off. I typically grease a marble slab and cut the cake over that. You can also use a grease silicone chopping mat. Make sure to grease the knife with oil frequently. Interestingly, you don’t need to grease the kitchen scissors when cutting the cake.

Slicing Cake

You can leave the cake on your counter, covered, overnight. The cake usually keeps well, provided that your kitchen isn’t hot and humid. If you’re storing it for more than a day, you’ll want to refrigerate the cake. You can reheat the cake again by steaming it for several minutes or microwaving it until the cake softens.

Eat the cake within 3 or 4 days because mold will start to form on the cake. You can freeze the cake for longer storage and steam the cake to reheat.

Storing Cake

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvShkwdrYa4

FULL RECIPE HERE:  https://healthynibblesandbits.com/tapioca-thousand-layer-cake/

I highly recommend reading through the recipe because I include a LOT of tips on how to make the cake successfully.

My family LOVES when my mom makes a batch of this steamed tapioca cake. It's lightly sweet and wonderfully chewy. Mama Lin always cooks a tapioca thousand layer cake for Lunar New Year, along with a 年糕 (neen go, new year’s cake). Besides Lunar New Year, my mom would steam this cake for parties. It’s a perfect palette cleanser because the cake has a mild sweet flavor and it’s moist. 

Ingredients:
370 grams brown sugar slabs (can sub with 340 grams or 2 cups packed light brown sugar)
4 cups (945ml) water, divided
390 grams tapioca flour (3 1/4 cups measured with the spoon-and-sweep method)
1 teaspoon kansui, optional
toasted sesame seeds
shredded unsweetened coconut

Notes:

My video about the spoon-and-sweep method here: https://youtu.be/-FDe0pxHpUo

Light brown sugar tends to be sweeter than brown sugar slabs, which is why I recommend using 340 grams of it. Even if you use light brown sugar for the cake, make sure to dissolve the sugar in boiling water.

Some people asked if you can just pour all the batter into the pan at once and steam it. Yes, you can do that. But this defeats the purpose of the thousand layer cake, where you can see the small individual layers. 

You can use any pan that holds 6 to 7 cups of liquid. Grease the pan and set it over the steaming rack.

Equipment Used (affiliate links below)
Buffalo Brand Stainless Steel Wok: https://amzn.to/33Ac2qK
Steaming Rack: https://amzn.to/2ZJXHHa

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Steamed Tapioca Thousand Layer Cake (菱粉糍/千層糕)

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