Carp Coconut Nian Gao (椰汁锦鲤年糕) by Vanessa Tay

Carp Coconut Nian Gao (椰汁锦鲤年糕)

http://www.bakinglanguage.com/?p=795

Ingredients:

glutinous rice flour 200g

wheat starch 30g

rice flour 20g

rock sugar 120g (you may adjust to your preferred sweetness)
 
salt 1/8 teaspoon
 
water 225ml (original recipe 200ml)
 
coconut milk 150g (original recipe 130g. I used Heng Guan packet coconut milk.)
 
carrot juice 80ml (to use 140g carrot and 80g water. You may use pumpkin to replace carrot) *This amount is enough for 2 nian gaos for me. Hence you might want to half the amount here.

Method:

1. Mix rock sugar, salt and water in a pot. Boil till dissolve. Leave aside to cool.
 
2. Mix together and stir well the glutinous rice flour, wheat starch and rice flour. Slowly add in the cooled sugar water into the flour mixture. Knead into a dough. Cover with cling wrap and best to leave overnight.
*I could not get the flour to stick together and it was still very crumbly, hence I increased the amount of water to 225ml in my second attempt. For the first attempt, I just simply added another 25ml of water when I was trying to knead the dough.
*I later read under the comments in the original post that you could just leave the covered dough in room temperature. I missed out the part and left the dough in the fridge. However I let it thawed before proceeding the next step. The dough became very hard when removed from the fridge.
 
3. Steam the carrots till cooked and soft. Add in the water and blend together with the carrots to make into puree. Strain the pureed carrot to obtain the juice.
 
4. Add in coconut milk to “break open” the dough and loosen it to liquid form. Strain the liquid 2 to 3 times to ensure no flour lumps.
*I skipped the straining part and I used my mixer to help with the mixing. The mixture was smooth and no visible lumps. I increased the coconut milk from 130g to 150g.
 
5. Grease the mould with cooking oil. You may want to grease with more oil so that it will be easier to unmould the nian gao. Scoop some of the carrot juice and pour over the gales and the fins parts of the koi mould. Steam for 2-3 minutes. Pour in the remaining. Steam under high heat for 20 minutes.
 
6. Cool completely the cooked nian gao. You may want to chill the nian gao in the fridge to set it further before unmoulding as the nian gao is very soft when just steamed.