KERANJANG CAKE

Have you ever heard Keranjang cake? Or do you like to eat Keranjang cake? Every year in Imlek Ceremony (Happy Chinese New Year) is incomplete if there is no Keranjang cake. The Keranjang cake is a traditional cake and a feature of Imlek ceremony which symbolize Prosperity. Many people said that to make this cake was very difficult and exhausted. Although this cake is very difficult to be made, it is always to be a favorite one, because this cake is very delicious with its chewy sensation. I am sure you curious how hard it is and how the process to make this cake so here there are several ways how to make Keranjang cake.

The first is kibbling, which we kibble the sticky rice with the rice mill. We kibble the sticky rice mix with water to make them easily become flour. In this process we kibble the sticky rice until they become soft flour.

The second one is pressing, in this process, the sticky rice which has become soft flour put in the sifter pouch then the bind the sifter pouch. After that, we must press or push the sifter pouch with hand to output the water repeatedly. If the water in the sifter pouch stops flowing, we have to put a stone on the sifter pouch in order , to effort the flour is dry that to make us do something in the next steps easily.

The third is making the dough, after the sticky rice flour was dry we have to provide a basin and a tin. Put the dry flour of sticky rice into the basin and then mix them with powdered sugar evenly. After that we beat them to become chewy. Remember! The sum of sugar and sticky rice flour should be equality in order to product the chewy dough.

The final step is steaming. We have to prepare a tin which has 12 cm in diameter and 8 cm in depth. The tin must be lined with banana leaves or plastics for wrapping the cake. put the dough in the tin and then steam the tin of dough in the steamed pot. On the steamed pot, we should give bamboo webbing to prevent the dough from the water. In this process, we have to steam them for 6 hours but every 2 hours we must beat the batter in tin. After that we can take away from steamed pan and let the cakes dry for24 hours or one day to make it hard.

Those are all the procedures how to make Keranjang cake. I hope you can practice at home and enjoy the cake. The important things to success in making Keranjang cake is patient and tenacity which reflected the Chinese people.

ELSA MEYTI TABITA