A few weeks ago, Andrew set his heart on a sugee cake for his fifth birthday cake. This was due entirely to The Marvellous Sugee Cake by Quek Hong Shin. It’s one of a set of four children’s books, the other three being The Incredible Basket, The Amazing Sarong, and The Brilliant Oil Lamp. The illustrations are gorgeous and the writing is engaging and doesn’t grate (which is more than I can say for some adult SingLit, but I digress. The Stacey museums series by Lianne Ong is pretty good too, if you’re on the lookout for local children’s books).
I wanted to do the sugee cake justice, because when it comes to making things like these, these occasion cakes, I know you will agree there is no doing things by halves. As it is when I make something for the first time – and I generally don’t like testing recipes for sweets so I have to get it right the first time I make them, haha – I spent Too Much Time trawling the Internet for sugee cake recipes.
There were surprisingly few websites/ videos for traditional Eurasian sugee cake recipes (compared to other types of cake). And the recipes were either vague in some parts (e.g. 90% of the ones I found) or just really bossy in tone (e.g. Kitchen Tigress. But I guess with a blog name like that, what was I expecting?). Even the video Hong Shin made with his friend Andre was a bit vague.
Anyway, I consulted Jessica at Sunset Railway Café – she makes sugee cakes to sell every week – and in the week before Andrew’s birthday decided to go with Mrs Cecil’s Sugee Cake recipe, with tips from Kitchen Tigress’ recipe (I didn’t want to use the latter because she had you measure your egg whites and egg yolks by weight. Not a bad idea if you are really picky about this sort of thing, but come on, separating eggs is already so sian, who wants to weigh yolks and whites after that???).
Eurasian grandmothers might be rolling in their graves at the following, but if you, like me, were looking for a sugee cake recipe and found them all frustratingly vague, this is for you. I hope it turned up when you Googled and that is why you are here.
Caveats:
- I prefer my cake on the less moist side, so this is not super rich and is a bit crumbly – but as I said, my mother told me it tasted like sugee cake from an old-school bakery. I’ll take that. If you want a sugee cake that is richer and moister, you’re better off bribing a Eurasian friend for their Top Secret family recipe, handwritten in neat cursive in a tatty, held together with scotch tape notebook whose yellowing pages are stained with rempah fingerprints. A recipe where the proportion of egg yolks and butter to semolina flour/ all-purpose flour is higher than what’s stated below will result in a richer, moister cake (duh).
- I used my stand-mixer, and both the paddle and whisk attachments. I think a hand-mixer would do the job ok (bonus if yours has a whisk attachment).
- I made 18 cupcakes and a six-inch cake with my first batch of batter (doubled), but if you clicked here from my Instagram, you will know that the six-inch cake sunk in the middle, probably because I opened the oven door one too many times to check on the cupcakes. And, I confess, also to check on the bread I was baking at the same time. Moral of the story, don’t try to bake too many things at one time when you’re trying out a recipe for the first time. I scooped out the middle and the rest of it had baked up nicely, so that was ok.
RECIPE
Makes one 8-inch cake. I used a dark springform pan, 3 inches tall. Line the bottom of the pan with parchment paper, and grease the sides with a liberal amount of butter.
Baked for 1 hour or so at 160C without fan.
p/s also my apologies, the formatting is terrible but I haven't been writing often enough to spend the time required to look up formatting on blogger, haha.
Ingredients
About 170g semolina, err on the side of a bit more, e.g. 175-180g (original recipe called for 150g, but see step 1b)
200g butter (I used salted, because I use salted butter for all my baked goods)
1 tablespoon brandy
6 egg yolks
140g sugar (original recipe calls for 150g)
2 tablespoons vanilla
80g all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
40g whole almonds (I used skin on)
3 egg whites
Method
1. Toast the semolina.
- (a) Spread semolina thinly on a baking tray lined with parchment paper. 180C oven, no fan. Give it 10 minutes, take out the baking tray and give it a good stir, then stick it in for another 5 minutes.
- (b) I found that the semolina reduced in volume by about 20g after baking – so you want to start with about 170g semolina at least, to get 150g toasted semolina.
2. Toast the almonds.
- (a) When you take the semolina out to give it a good stir, you can stick the almonds in. No need to line the baking tray.
- (b) Remove toasted almonds and toasted semolina when the semolina is done, i.e. after the full 15 minutes of toasting the semolina.
3. Let semolina and almonds cool. The semolina should cool pretty quick as you measure the butter.
4. Cream the butter and semolina, and add the tablespoon of brandy to the mix as you are finishing up the creaming to incorporate (see 4b below).
- (a) This is where I found most recipes too vague – “mix” the semolina and butter? “Combine” the semolina and butter? Do I melt it or what??? But thankfully Jessica was able to give me some tips.
- (b) It’s actually like creaming butter and sugar. USE YOUR STAND-MIXER’S PADDLE ATTACHMENT. The butter should be room temperature (I admit I don’t bother with letting it come to room temperature from frozen, but you definitely should especially if you are using a hand-mixer. It doesn’t matter so much with a stand-mixer because it’s powerful enough to get the butter creamed from a frozen-ish state (but recipe bloggers are frowning, I know)). Do not cream for more than 5-8 minutes or so. Err on the side of longer if your butter is in a frozen-ish state.
- (c) But because no mixer is made equally, I will just say – DO NOT whip the butter and semolina to death i.e. it should NOT be too fluffy and pale. If it is, this means you have overwhipped the butter and your cake might not have enough structural integrity (fancy term. Also King Arthur Flour did a write-up on over-creaming butter and sugar and why you Should Not Do So. I think similar principles apply here).
5. Let the semolina-butter-brandy sit for about an hour. I left mine out on the counter and it was fine, it didn’t melt and was still quite fluffy after an hour, but my house is generally quite cool even when it’s boiling outside. You might want to stick your bowl in the fridge.
- (a) It did cross my mind that if the point of creaming the butter and semolina is to incorporate air into the mix, wouldn’t the air escape if I let it sit for a while? But what do I know?
- (b) Jessica says an hour should be sufficient, but I know some recipes say to stick it in the fridge overnight. There’s never enough space in my fridge, so I didn’t do this.
- (c) In Andre’s version that he made with Hong Shin, Andre soaked the semolina overnight in cream (see the YouTube video and the comments).
6. If you’re using a stand-mixer, transfer semolina-butter-brandy to a clean bowl, if you haven’t already done so. Add egg yolks and sugar to the bowl you creamed the semolina-butter-brandy in (or if you’re using a hand-mixer, just use another bowl). WHISK the egg yolks and sugar (i.e. use the whisk attachment) until you reach the RIBBON STAGE.
- (a) This was also a step no one really bothered to explain in their recipes. Mrs Cecil’s sugee cake video tells you to beat the egg yolks and sugar until they are fluffy (or something). Which, ok, is kinda correct, but “ribbon stage” is a more commonly used term. It essentially means the stage where the egg yolk-sugar mixture is dropping off your whisk in “ribbons”, when you stop mixing. You can google videos of this.
- (b) But note interpreting this step was pure guesswork, although to be fair the point of all these steps, after all, is to incorporate air into the batter for a cake that’s not too dense.
7. Add vanilla extract to egg yolk-sugar mixture. Whisk to incorporate (I continued using the whisk attachment).
- (a) Please don’t use Bake King brand imitation vanilla extract unless you really must.
8. Add semolina butter to egg yolk-sugar-vanilla extra mixture.
9. Sift the 80g all-purpose flour and 4 teaspoons baking powder (to avoid doubt, 80g is the unsifted weight of the flour) together. Add this to the mixture that resulted from step 8, together with a fat pinch of salt (I agared, since I used salted butter). You can continue using the whisk attachment to incorporate the flour, but since I am paranoid about you over-mixing the batter, better to just fold the flour in with a spatula.
10. Remember the toasted almonds? Chop them in a food processor, then add to the batter.
- (a) I went with around 25 pulses or so – you want a mix of bigger but not too big (I can also be vague) chopped pieces and finer almost almond flour like bits. You could also do this on a chopping board with a sharp knife, but I sliced into my left thumb chopping kale during Phase HA HA HA (was it only barely a month ago? What is time, in 2021?) and have been chary of chopping things ever since. Almonds have a tendency to bounce around when chopped, so definitely a no-go.
- OR you could just buy ready chopped almonds, I won’t judge you. But then I don’t know about toasting chopped almonds (step 2), will they burn easily?
11. Whip the egg whites in a CLEAN, DRY bowl until the soft peak stage.
- (a) I have a hand-mixer in addition to my stand-mixer, so I just used that. But if you are using your hand-mixer, please wash and dry the beaters before doing this. I’ve never tried, OBVIOUSLY, but every recipe blog I’ve ever read reminds me that my egg whites will not whip properly if my bowl and beaters are not squeaky clean.
12. Fold the whipped egg whites into the batter.
- (a) I did this in thirds, by hand, with a spatula. Do not use your mixer for this step. You want to be quick and thorough, and you don’t need to be TOO gentle with the egg whites. The key is to have a decisive folding motion and incorporate the egg whites into the batter quickly.
- (b) Do not overmix – just repeat the folding motion until no streaks of egg white remain.
13. Scrape the batter into your prepared baking pan, bake cake. DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN DOOR UNTIL AT LEAST 50 MINUTES HAVE PASSED. If making cupcakes, I think this amount of batter makes about 12-18 cupcakes, depending on how full you fill the tin. I filled each hole slightly more than two-thirds, and they baked up to the top. Some also spilled over, but they were still good to eat. Check for cupcake doneness around 18-20 minutes in.
Parting comments
Decorate as you wish! I didn't make royal icing because I don't like icing (or frosting) (what is cake without icing/ frosting?) but I did put blue pea flowers on top (Popo brought some from her blue pea flower plant, all that were whole, she said).
Crumb shot, after the blue pea flowers were plucked off the top of the cake and placed in water so Daniel could show the grandparents and uncles a "blue pea flower experiment" over Zoom (now everyone knows they turn water blue. "If you use hot water, they will release the blue more quickly!" said Popo. Did you know that?). Jessica also says the tunnels (holes) are because of air bubbles/ slightly too hot oven temp (I couldn't really hear her properly through her mask and the social distance ha ha).
