First of all, this steamed cake turned out beautiful and delicious!
It was soft and moist with dark rich flavor, and I already ate a half of it by myself.
I do have to make a confession, though.
This was actually my second try to make Ma Lai Gao.
The first one was delicious, but the texture was too different.
It was moist but dense.
For this one I completely changed the ingredients, and it resulted in a much softer, not dense, texture.
However, the texture is still not like the authentic one, (again based on pictures and descriptions I see online because I’ve never tried the real thing).
It’s soft but not springy.
So at this point, I just call this a steamed cake.
Based on a little reading I did, Ma Lai Gao is a traditional steamed cake, popular in Hong Kong.
I’ve never had a chance to try Ma Lai Gao, in Hong Kong, or anywhere else, but when I found a vegan gluten-free recipe in a book by Ms. Hiroko Shirasaki, a popular Japanese recipe developer, I got interested.
It steamed beautifully.
I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but I liked what I saw and tasted.
This cake is soft and moist, and has a depth in the sweetness, but not overly sweet.
But after making it, I did a little more research, and I found out that the authentic one has a rather fluffy (rather than moist or sticky, which I was going for!) texture.
I’m not sure if there is a next time, but if there is, it would be fun to make some changes to get the fluffy texture,
I follow the Vegan Snickers recipe, but only mostly, because I just use whatever the ingredients I have in the house, so they are a bit different every time.
But whether they are Snickers or not doesn’t really matter, because these were delicious!!
The ingredients are relatively “health”, but they are still dangerous because once I start eating I have a hard time stopping!
My mother was a wonderful cook and baker, but more than anything she was an adventurous one.
She loved trying new recipes, and I think it came from her general attitude toward life, that she loved (and loves) to learn new things.
When I was little, cheesecake was not well known in Japan.
It was not something you could buy at cake shops or bakeries, and few people knew about it.
Yet, my mother was baking cheesecake at home!
Interestingly, my mother’s cheesecake contained processed cheese, not cream cheese.
Soon, cheesecake did become extremely popular, and everyone began making it at home.
I did try various types of cheesecake, mostly made with cream cheese, but my mother’s cheesecake continued to be one of my favorites.
I do bake cheesecake myself, and usually I use cream cheese (until I started the plant-based diet), but yesterday this idea of using a different type of cheese came to me.
I happened to have homemade vegan cheddar, and I thought it would be fun to use it.
I wasn’t completely sure about this.
Not about not using cream cheese, but that the “cheese” I was going to use is plant-based and not dairy.
But it turned out really good!
(This is not my mother’s recipe.)
It was nice and moist, and I found the unique cheddar flavor wonderful.