SHF # 17 - Dairy

This month's theme for SHF is all about dairy i.e milk, cream, yoghurts and cheese which is hosted by Spittoon Extra. As I love working with local ingredients, I decided to try making Pandan Pudding served with Gula Melaka syrup. The recipe is from a famous Malay restaurant in town. The pudding is akin to a panna cotta and rich with milk and cream making it very sinful eating. It's extremely easy to make and you get perfectly formed puddings by using heat proof plastic moulds.

Although the pudding looked great with it's light green tinge, I thought the taste was a bit flat and uninspiring. If it wasn't for the gula melaka syrup, it would have been a disaster but the syrup helped give it flavour especially when you add lots of it. I'm not sure why the taste is not great but it could be due to my usage of pandan leaves versus the stronger tasting and artificial pandan extract.

Pandan Pudding with Gula Melaka syrup

Gula Melaka syrup (palm sugar syrup)

100 grams gula melaka/palm sugar, shaved
50 mls water

In a small stainless steel saucepan over medium heat, slowly melt the palm sugar in the water. Do not stir, but swirl the saucepan from time to time to distribute the heat, until the caramel turns golden brown. Pour the caramel into the base of your moulds. Do this carefully and at arm's length as the hot caramel may splutter. Set aside.

For the pudding

450 mls full cream milk
550 mls cream, 35% milk fat
50 grams caster sugar
15 grams gelatine
25 grams pandan leaf, shredded
palm sugar caramel
6 to 8 plastic moulds

Blitz 350 ml of the milk and the shredded pandan leaf in a food processor until roughly combined. Pour the mixture into a saucepan. Soften the gelatine by sprinkling in over 1/3 cup of remaining milk, let it stand for 5 minutes. Add the rest of the milk, the cream and the sugar to the saucepan with the pandan milk, add the softened gelatine and simmer gently stirring constantly for about 15 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool slightly. Strain the mixture through a muslin cloth and pour into a jug. Pour into moulds and refrigerate until set. When ready to serve, place serving plate over moulds and with a firm short shake, puddings would slip out easily.

Tagged with: SHF # 17 + Sugar High Friday

Update: Spittoon has done the round-up which is in a cool format - you get to see where the entries come from all over the world. Do visit and indulge in the worldwide dairy entries.