The Topless Tiramisu

The family's current obsession is the homemade sambal. A friend of Pa, who opens up a restaurant, shop, whatever it is in Serdang, serves great luscious sambal dishes. Ranging from seafoods to veggies. As their sambals were addictive and delish, it was not surprising that he has been selling buckets of it; just for a sum of RM10. The sambal were sweet and best of all, loads of dried prawns. Very very fattening and high in calories.


We found out that the sambal was best served together with coconuts and glutinous rice. Hence, we were then hooked up with the Grilled Glutinous Rice With Sambal. Or shall we say this in Bahasa Melayu; which is Pulut Panggang.


Helpers came in to pluck, wash, cut and dry the fresh banana leaves, taken from the graveyard nearby. Okay, we're not that daring. They plucked it somewhere though. Ma helped too, as this is her main yet brilliant idea. We would love to use the banana leaves to wrap up the glutinous rice but we still prefer using the aluminium foil as it doesn't absorb oil and is more convenient. Ma insists that the banana leaves is a better choice to picked as it basically had a sweet and fresh aroma which will heightens the flavor of the glutinous rice while protecting the rice itself from direct heat. And boy, it was so true.


As for the filling, which is a combination of brown sugar, fresh grated coconut and sambals, it blends well together and tasted good. Recipe as follows;


Grilled Glutinous Rice With Sambal

Glutinous Rice;
500g glutinous rice
3 cups of drinking water
1 grated coconut
1 teaspoon salt
Some oil, for the use of brushing during grilling
Approximate 6 banana leaves

1. Wash the banana leaves with boiling water to eliminate contamination and dirts. Pat dry it with a clean cloth. Cut the leaves into squares of 15cm long.
2. Soak the glutinous rice into 2 cups of water for an hour or so. Set aside.
3. Add 1 cup of water into the freshly grated coconut. Squeeze out the coconut milk or santan with a cheesecloth. This will probably yield 1-1/2 cups of coconut milk. Set aside.
4. After an hour or so, drain the glutinous rice. Combine the glutinous rice with the coconut milk and salt. Scoop onto a rectangular baking tray or stainless steel tray. Bring to steam until cooked. This will take about 20-25 minutes. Do not overcooked because the rice will turn soft and sticky.
5. Once cooked, set aside to cool completely.


Fillings;
2 tablespoon cooking oil
1/2 cup young grated coconut
2 tablespoon brown sugar
1 cup of ready made sambal
1 teaspoon salt

1. Heat cooking oil on a pan on low heat. Add in the coconut and brown sugar and fry.
2. Mix in sambal and salt. Fry and mix until well combined, takes approximately 5 minutes on low heat.
3. Set aside to cool.


Assembling;
1. Get the banana leaves, glutinous rice and fillings nearby so it becomes more handy and convenient. Place 3 tablespoons of glutinous rice onto the banana leave. Spread and flatten the glutinous rice by pressing the rice with the other side of the banana leave. The rice will look like flattened, and as large as 8x8cm.


2. Then, place a tablespoonful or maybe even more fillings onto the rice. Lined the fillings on one side of the rice. Hold two ends of the banana leaves and press lightly. Open up the banana leave and place some glutinous rice to cover both ends. Hold two ends of banana leave and press lightly on the top and sides of the rice. It will look like the shot above.


3. Roll the banana leave like the shot above. Secure the two ends with a stapler. Repeat procedures until the ingredients are wiped out clean!


4. Then, place each of the wrapped up glutinous rice onto a baking tray. Preheat oven on 150''C. Brush with some cooking oil on its body. Bake for 5 minutes. Then, turn the rolls on the other side. Bake for another 5-8 minutes. Serve while it's hot. =}


On the main topic of the post, we, basically had made a topless cake for Uncle Phill's 51st birthday. It was Pa's idea for having a Golf Course Tiramisu Cake with the obvious theme of; golf and turfs, for his recuperated brother. Uncle Phill is recovering from his bypass surgery and we were blessed that he is in the pink of health now.


We laid our paws and hands onto the cake, be it decorating or stacking up sky-high cakes, on the day before his birthday. We've found out that the sponges are lack of coffee aroma and taste though heaps of tablespoonfuls of instant coffee powder and coffee emulco have been forced to blend in with the former vanilla batter. More sachets of instant coffee were used just for the sponges.


While the sponges was then sent to the preheated oven for baking, we chop the dark cooking chocolate into chunky thin films, prepare the coffee syrup and most importantly, beat up the sponge fingers batter. The sponge fingers were devastating, in terms of its shape. It looks like dried fawn baby corals from far. Nevertheless, it tasted like a real sponge finger. =)


Once the baking is done, the coffee sponges and sponge fingers were cooled on a wire rack. We slice the coffee sponge into 3 slices since we opt for a tall cake. The first slice were laid onto the cake board, followed by brushing the coffee sponge with coffee syrup, sprinkling chunks of thin-filmed chocolate chunks and arranging the dipped-into-coffee-syrup sponge fingers onto the first cake sponge.


Next. we poured in a generous amount of coffee whipped cream, this is followed by the yummy mascarpone cheese mixture. We find that a single colored cream is dull and bored, so, we tried to go for two tones; the coffee whipped cream was light brown in color while on the other hand, the cheesy mixture was pale yellow.


After assembling the sky-high cake, it was then covered with tasteless whipped whipping cream. Then, the watery chocolate ganache was the next thing for us to fiddled with. Melting the ganache was easy. But identifying the right consistency of the ganache was way harder than we've thought. The outcome was B-okay. It looked smoother on the top relatively with the sides.


During chilling the whole cake in the refrigerator, we land our paws and hands onto the edible golf balls. Rocher's were used since it is large enough to portray golf balls.


By then, we flattened the white sugarpastes with the roller and wrap it around the Rocher's. Disposable gloves were used as we were too afraid that the cost of paying off doctors' bills exceeds the cost of the cake. To look more like a golf ball, tiny holes were crafted.


Next, we molded the flagpole with the number 51 written on the flag. The flag was made out of sugarpaste as well, while the pole was a wooden chopstick. The crafted sugarpastes were placed into a container and it will be used to decorate the cake on the day it was cut.


We moved on with the artificial turf. And we were speechless when it comes to THAT artificial green turf.


Rather than kneading a green fondant to portray the turf, we opt for the green ganache. We mixed in too much of the whipping cream into the melted white chocolate during the boiling session runs. It looked uber slimy and poisonous. Very toxic-looking. Here comes the ugly. Blame Fatass's instinct!


Lastly, the piping session. We prefer piping these words in non-italic fonts as our cursive were not that pretty to the eye. And yeah, we omitted 'Uncle' as this is part of Pa's gift. He pays, we bake! ;)


As for the cake itself, it was real sky-high tall. It tasted not too bitter and not that sweet either. The mascarpone cheese was the best part. Oh boy, here comes the naked truth, most of them preferred eating the cake than the green slime. Hence, the cake go naked without its coat. Well, one word; topless.


The picture above; the cake's eye view. Despite of the green ugly watery slime, we were happy with the end result though the decorations turned out ugly. One shoutout before this paw-printed post ends, Happy Buttday Uncle Phill! =)