Teocheow Red Peach Cake 潮州紅桃粿

This type of traditional Teocheow cake is very rare and hard to find. Not too many people know about this cake and it's hard to find even at traditional market. I asked another Teochew friend from Pontianak and she told me she has seen this type of cake but with sweet filling made of mung bean. But this type is the savory type with glutinous rice, mushroom etc.

I like eating it when I was younger. 😅 But now I found it too heavy and too much carb. The skin is made of mixture of rice flour and tapioca starch. The filling is made of sweet rice, mushroom, dried shrimp etc. It sort of reminded me of burrito. Carb heavy !

You need a mold to shape this into a "peach" like shape. The mold is made of plastic and could be purchased online. In the older time, my mom used to have a wooden mold. Heavier to handle and harder to find now.

Yield : 28-32 depends on thickness of the cake

Ingredients for filling :

400 gram glutinious rice (aka sweet rice)

10-12 dry shitake mushroom, soaked until soft, cut into thin sliver

approx 100 gr dried shrimp, soaked until soft, cut into tiny pieces

approx 100 pork, cut into tiny pieces

1 piece of yellow tofu (or firm tofu)

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

2 shallot, finely chopped

Water from soaked mushroom

1 cup of finely chopped celery leaves

10 tbs cooking oil

Fish sauce as needed

Red color as needed

Method for filling (could be prepared a day before) :

Wash the sweet rice and cooked in rice cooker. Use your hand as measurement for water needed. Put your hand in palm down, make sure four fingers are covered with water. While it's cooking we could prepare the other ingredients. 

Prepare a wok with 5 tbs of oil. Heat up the oil. Once hot, put in the dry shrimp. Fry until fragrant then put in the mushroom sliver. Keep on stirring until fragrant and cooked. About 10 minutes. Then remove from wok and keep in a big platter.

Using the same wok, put in 3 tbs of oil. Once the oil is hot enough, put in the tofu. Fry until fragrant. About five minutes. Put tofu in the same platter next to the dry shrimp. Or if platter not big enough then keep it in a plate.

Same method for the next one. Put in about 2 tbs oil. Fry the garlic and shallot. Once fragrant put in the pork. Fry for about 2 minutes then put in the soaked mushroom water. Cook for another 10 minutes until cook through. Season with fish sauce. You want it to be a bit salty since the other ingredients are not salted. Don't forget that dry shrimp by itself is naturally salty.

Prepare a non stick wok that's big enough for all the ingredients including the sticky rice. Empty the sticky rice from the rice cooker into the wok, pile in all the ingredients. Turn on the stove on low heat. Mix the rice with the ingredients along with the celery leaves until well mixed.

Keep this sweet rice mixture in a air tight container or shrink wrap it and keep in refrigerator.

Ingredients for skin:

500 gr rice flour

700 gr boiling hot water

1/4 ts salt

2 tbs tapioca starch

2 tbs vegetable oil

a few drop of red color (optional)

Additional 1 cup of rice flour for kneading

Pin roller

A few banana leaves to prevent sticking

3-4 tbs vegetable oil for brushing

Method for skin :

Prepare a steamer with water for steaming about 10-15 minutes.

Mix all the dry ingredients in a big bowl or non stick container/wok. Boil water in kettle then measure the correct amount. Mix in color if using and vegetable oil. Add the liquid to the dry ingredients a bit at a time and stir until it forms a dough.

Transfer this dough into the steamer and steam for about 10-15 minutes until the dough becomes firm.

Transfer the dough onto a surface to be kneaded. Using two spatula or thick glove wrapped with plastic glove, work on kneading the dough until it's soft, easy to work with and not sticky. This process could take about ten minutes.

Then take some dough and form smaller dough balls about the size of a golf ball. Keep them covered while we work with them one at a time.

Putting them together :

Pick up a dough ball and flatten. Using a pin roller, roll it out until 12 cm in diameter. Then use the pin roller to thin out the outer portion of the disc (about 1.5 cm). This will make sure that the outer layer when pressed together doesn't become too thick yet the middle of the disc where the filling going to be isn't going to be too thin. When the middle portion is too thin, the filling will show up when the dough get pressed down onto the mold.

There are two ways to put the filling in. My mom likes to put in the filling and then pinch dough together to close it into a cocoon shape before placing it in the mold to shape it into a "peach".

I like to put the dough sheet on top of the mold then put the filling in using the shape of the mold as guidance. This way I would not put too much filling in making it a huge "peach". Once I put enough filling in, then I fold the dough sheet in and make it into sort of a triangle shape before pressing it down further into the mold.

You want the "peach" to show the carving on it. That's why pressing the dough tightly into the mold makes all the difference. This process is time consuming.

Once you have enough to be put into the steamer, you could start your first batch. Layer your steamer with the banana leaves then brush some oil onto the banana leaves to prevent sticking. Place your ready made peach cake onto the banana leaves, careful not too close to each other as they may end up sticking to each other. Steam for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, brush each of the peach cake with oil. Then remove the peach cake using a silicone spatula to a cooling plate. Once cool enough, they could be kept in an airtight container for a few days. You could keep a layer of plastic between each layer of peach cake to prevent sticking. I have never tried freezing them.

Troubleshooting :

• The tofu used for filling is the yellow tofu. It's firm. Not sure why it's yellow color. I have never seen this in the North America. I would use firm tofu instead.
• Make sure the water used for mixing the skin ingredients is boiling hot. Or else it won't form a dough.
• If your dough is not enough, no fret, you could just eat the leftover filling by itself. I actually love it by itself. Fragrant.