Steamed Pumpkin Cake

I bought a pumpkin from an agricultural fair recently. It was roughly 5 times more expensive than the normal pumpkin. I was told that this type of pumpkin is meant for export market and the skin is also edible. Since I have never try it before, I decided to buy one home. I used roughly 1/2 of it to make this steamed pumpkin cake. This was my first time attempting to make steamed pumpkin cake, although I have made the quite similar steamed yam cake countless of times.

I used almost similar ingredients and method that I used to make steamed yam cake for this. I am very delighted as it turn out so well and nice. I know many people like to add minced pork or Chinese sausage into this kind of cake but that is just not me. Even when I make steamed yam cake, I do not add in any meat as I do not like its texture in the cake. Another compelling reason why I don't add in any pork is that I feel that it is not that suitable for the girls to bring to their school since they have Muslim friends in school. If you prefer, you may add in some minced meat or Chinese sausages.

Steamed Pumpkin Cake

Ingredients:

400g pumpkin, shredded

380g rice flour

1.2 ltr water

14 shallots

26g dried shrimps

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp 5 spice powder

1 1/2 tsp pepper

2 tsp sugar

2 tsp salt

1/2 cube chicken stock (optional)

Method:

1. Slice and fry the shallots till crispy and set aside. 

2. Use the same oil to fry the dried shrimps till fragrant and set aside.

3. Mix together rice flour, 5 spice powder, chicken stock, 1/2 tsp pepper and 400 ml water. Mix well and set aside.

5. Scoop out the extra oil from frying the shallots and dried shrimps and leave 2 tbsp in the wok. 

6. Fry the minced garlic and add in pumpkin. Add in 1 tsp of fried shallots.

7. Stir-fry the pumpkin for few minutes. Then add in the remaining 800ml water, sugar, salt and 1/2 tsp pepper. Reduce the flame and let simmer for roughly 15 minutes.

8. Lightly stir the flour mixture to avoid clumps accumulating at the bottom. Then pour the flour mixture into the wok. Add the remaining 1/2 tsp pepper,  1/3 of fried shallots and 2/3 of fried dried shrimps into the batter.

9. Thoroughly combine and mix the pumpkin mixture with the flour mixture till the batter is thicken. Turn off the flame.

10. Scoop the batter into a greased 24cm x 24cm x 7cm square pan and steam over rapid boiling water for 30 minutes till the skewer inserted into the cake turn out clean.

11. Sprinkle the remaining fried shallots crisps and dried shrimps on top of the steamed cake.

Notes:

1. I used the oil that I used to fry shallots and garlic to grease the steaming pan for better flavour