I know, I know - my blog last year was more like a Malaysian holiday blog than a Katong blog! It just so happened I visited Malaysia more than normal last year. But let me try and make amends this year with this post on my variations on sugee cake.
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| Almond-topped sugee |
Now I have been making sugee cake for quite a few years now and it has been getting a wee bit tedious. So I have been trying to tweak the recipe here and there to make it more interesting and also to see how I can enhance the original recipe. One easy tweak was to top it with almond flakes because my family find the marzipan and icing way too sweet, and to add almond flavouring so that we don't lose the almond flavour the marzipan brings. Now however, I'm starting to used coarsely crushed unpeeled almonds instead - gives a toasted almond flavour and the crunch of the nuts adds texture. I'm thinking of crushing them a tad more finely and using this to partially replace the ground almonds in the cake, for a more rustic sugee.
I have also tried
making it with browned butter - an interesting idea, but whilst doing so certainly enhances the buttery flavour of the cake, the nutty-ness of the browned butter doesn't really come through. In any case, butter should not overpower the almond flavour.
This year, I decided to try it with lemon. I mentioned it to my mother who reacted with shock and horror. Heresy! Lemon in sugee cake! But there are lots of "lemon almond" or "lemon semolina" or even "lemon almond semolina" cake recipes around, for those who want to avoid eating gluten. So why not?
In deference to my mother's feelings, however, I decided not to drop the traditional sugee entirely.
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| Lemon sugee cakes (made in muffin cases) |
Instead, I set aside a little batter for two lemon semolina mini-cakes. I didn't add any almond or vanilla essence in this batch, but added maybe two tablespoons of lemon juice and a little zest. It was hard to calibrate the amount required for the small amount of batter, so whilst I could taste the lemony flavour, it could have been a lot stronger. But the bonus was that the cake really had a nice rise, so it is lighter than the traditional sugee. I suppose this was the citric acid reacting with the baking powder.
How was it received? My mother basically said that if I wanted lemon cake, to stick to Nigella's lemon drizzle cake recipe which doesn't require me to soak semolina in butter overnight. Likely she's right but I'm nonetheless glad to have tried this little experiment.
