Steamed Tapioca Layered Cake

Steamed tapioca layered cake tastes like the jelly cake, chewy and soft. It's known as kue lapis kukus in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. In Vietnam, it's known as Banh Da Lon. Mung bean and rice flour are added as the additional ingredients in the cake. In Thailand, it's known as Khanom Chan, and it symbolises for the bride and groom mean moving forward in life and building family together. Anyway, it comes with colourful layers, usually in red, green, brown and white. 

The way I prepare the colouring:

I prefer using the natural food colouring. For green colour, I am squeezing the juice from pandan leaves. For brown layer, I use the palm sugar or coconut sugar. For the white layer, I just use the tapioca batter. But with the red layer, I have to use the food colouring, that's why I only make it for 1 layer of red colour. 

Ingredients:

4 cups of tapioca flour

3.5 cups of water

1.5 cups of coconut milk

2.5 cups of sugar

Instruction:

1. Mix well 4 cups of tapioca flour with 1.5 cup of water. Make sure to stir it very well to get the smooth batter.
2. In a pot boil of water (2 cups of water), add sugar and pandan leaves together till sugar dissolved. 
3. Turn off heat, discard pandan leaved and add coconut milk. Stir well.
4. Pour to the tapioca flour batter while hot.
5. After mix well, divide mixture in four portions. I got three equal portions for brown, green and white layer, but less portion for the red layer because I only make 1 layer for the red colour.
6. Now I have 4 mixtures with different colour on it, which are white, green, brown and red.
7. Prepare the steamer and the mould. 
8. Steam each layer with the alternate colour for about 5 minutes until all the mixture is used up. I prefer to steam 2 layers of the same colours before continuing with another colour.
9. Leave the layered cake until cool completely, dislodge from the mould and ready to cut. It's easier to use the bigger knife to cut it.