Chinese smiling cupcakes (Gateau poutou/poutou)

In Chinese culture, cakes or 糕 “gao” are usually steamed, rather than baked, making the cakes  quite moist. This is a traditional chinese recipe, although we changed it a little bit, using normal flour instead of rice flour. Rice flour will make the cake more sticky and using normal flour doesn’t change the taste much. These chinese cakes are usually called rice cakes or steamed rice cakes, but while doing some research on them on the internet, I found that there are many different kinds of rice cakes: korean rice cakes (ddeok), japanese rice cakes(mochi), Philipines rice cakes (Puto),…all using the same ingredient that is glutinous rice or sticky rice or rice flour. In Mauritius, they are known as Poutou or Gateau poutou. I will definitely post these rice cake recipes later on, but for now I will just share with you this simple snack cakes recipe If you want your snack cakes to be of different color, then you just change the food coloring color.

Chinese Smiling Cupcakes recipe

Ingredients:
500grms flour
200 grms sugar
400 ml warm water
zest of 1 orange or coconut powder
red food coloring
12 small chinese cups ( chia bi) warm in steamer 10 minutes before cooking
and greased with little oil

Steps:
1.Put water in the steamer and while waiting for the water to boil, proceed to Step 2.
2.Beat well all ingredients in  a bowl , at high speed(you could use a hand blender) or until all sugar dissolves.
3.Pour mixture in  hot cups.
4.Put in the “steaming steamer” and cook 25 minutes. You know the cakes are cooked when you put a chopstick in the cake and it comes out clean.

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