Chinese New Year endeavours: Kueh Bangkit

Edited on 09 Feb 2010 with more pictures.
- posted by Sissy R.

I remember helping my parents to bake this Chinese New Year must-have when I was young. We churned out trays after trays because my parents sold them and they were so good, old customers returned and new customers asked about it every year. We sisters loved to do the mixing of flour and green liquid mixture then rolling out the dough and cutting out shapes using the cookie cutter.

Then I guess my parents got busy and we stopped making them. Over the years (at least a decade), we contemplated doing kueh bangkit several times for our own consumption but was hindered by the thought of cleaning after frying the tapioca flour. That is until 2 days ago. We thought, 'Hey, since our kitchen is already so dirty after frying the cashew nuts and we have to clean it anyway, no harm dirtying it a bit more frying the flour.' I can't believe we just thought of this when we have been doing our cashews every year for, again, at least a decade.

But as luck would have it, Dad's recipe is lost somewhere in the house so this is my first attempt at this recipe. It turned out pretty well (melt-in-your-mouth) although it's still a far cry from my dad's. If you need a comparison: Mine's good, but his is phenomenal.

Anyway, today's fairly successful attempt must also be credited to my Dad for his help, experience and advice in frying the flour, squeezing the grated coconut and telling me if the dough was dry/wet enough, and Sissy S for her awesome niap-ing skills.


Ingredients:
Approximately 440g of fried tapioca flour (This amount includes those for dusting.)
3 pandan leaves cut into small pieces
60g margarine
130g castor sugar
2 egg yolks
Approximately 200ml of coconut milk

1. Fry the flour with pandan leaves over low heat, stirring constantly. This is to remove moisture from the flour. Dad fried 1.5kg of flour for about 45 minutes. The flour should be very light (weight-wise) after frying.
2. Leave the flour to cool overnight.
3. Cream margarine with yolk and sugar till sugar dissolves.

4. Add in 150ml of coconut milk and mix well. Divide the mixture into portions that after mixing with flour is just right for one time of rolling out and cutting.

5. Add flour into one portion of mixture slowly until a non-sticky dough is formed. If dough is too dry, add coconut milk a little at a time.

6. Flour the rolling surface, rolling pin, cookie cutters, pincher and baking tray.
7. Roll the dough to a thickness of about 0.5cm. Use cookie cutters to cut into shapes and a pincher to pinch desired designs.
8. Put it in a preheated oven at 150 degrees for about 10 to 15 minutes. I personally don't like too white kueh bangkit so I take it out when it is just going to turn a little brown.
9. Allow to cool before storing.

Pointers:
1. Icing sugar is recommended but I used castor sugar and it turned out alright.
2. I used fresh coconut milk. This amount came from approximately 2 coconuts. Squeeze the grated coconuts without adding any water.
3. The addition of too much coconut milk will result in dry and crispy kueh bangkit. At the same time, no water should be added during the entire process.
4. The dough tends to dry out very fast so it's better to portion the liquid and flour and mix them in another bowl.
5. For dusting, we wrap some flour in a cloth, band it with a rubber band such that it's like a loose wanton, and use it to pat wherever.

6. An optional step is to leave the kueh bangkit aside just before baking to dry the dough for better raising. I haven't tried this though.
7. Feel free to place the kueh bangkit very close to each other on the baking tray as they expand very little lengthwise.

8. Some people remove moisture from the flour by microwaving or putting it in the oven to reduce clean-up. I haven't tried it though.