Cendol from Scratch

Tropical countries in South East Asia has a couple of common desserts. One of them is the infamous, Cendol. This green worm like jelly product is a joy on a hot sunny day. Served on shaved ice topped with coconut milk and drizzled with thick Gula Melaka syrup, The Cendol is an all time Malaysian favourite dessert. They tastes better on the streets, I think that is due to the feeling of the cool smooth sweetness of the dessert gliding down one's throat when one is half melting in the sun!

Aunty Mayyee shows us how it is made the traditional way minus the machines and the artificial food colouring which is how most are being produced commercially nowadays.

Here are the simple ingredients:

• 1 cup green pea flour (Lok Tau Tang Meen)
• 4 cups of water
• 10 stems of pandanus leaves
• 1 tsp Air Abu (Sodium Silicate)

Method:

1. Soak 1 cup of of green pea flour with 2 cups of water for 2 hours
2. Blend the pandanus leaves with the remaining 2 cups of water
3. Sift the blended juice and squeeze out as much juice from the blended leaves. Discard mashed by product
4. Mix juice to soaked flour slurry 
5. Stir the slurry
6. Add in 1 tsp of Air Abu
7. See the brightness of the green pop
8. Continuously stir to cook the slurry over medium heat
9. Meanwhile, prepare a tub of ice cold water
10. We have a make shift gadget to create the 'worms'. It is a lid of a metal pan, hammered with holes of approx 0.5cm in diameter. Place this gadget on top of iced water
11. As soon as the slurry thickens to a consistency of a thick pliable glob, turn the heat down to its lowest. The glob needs to stay hot to be pliable, otherwise it will turn hard as it cools down which in turn will make it very difficult to push it through the holes.
12. Scoop a ladle of glob onto the holed pan. Working quickly with a silicon scrapper or side of a mug, push the mixture through the holes, creating strand like worms to fall into the iced water. Once it hits the iced water, the strands hardens and form the infamous worm like jelly cendol.
13. Drain & serve with shaven ice (best) or ice cubes, coconut cream (add a little salt) and Gula Melaka Syrup (recipe can be found from my earlier post on Sago Gula Melaka)
14. Some like to add accompliments like Red Beans, Glutinuous Rice, Grass Jelly, Creamed Corn, Ice Cream etc etc ... then it turns into A B C !

Images:

Ingredients

This is the Luk Tau Tang Meen Flour

The more pandan, the merrier!

The Secret for the QQ bite

Cooking the slurry

You want it to be at this consistency

Family Heirloom hand made by Sifu's mama

You can choose a mug for the job like how Grand Sifu made it...

Or you can opt for a silicon or plastic scraper (we find this much easier)

Yummilicious!

Au Naturel !

I love Gula Melaka Syrup.. cant help it!! Sorry guys!!