Pau Pau's Lucky 8 Layer Tapioca Cake

anyone else have an old handwritten recipe in Chinese they need help with?

Last Christmas I asked my Pau Pau (maternal grandma) for her 8 Layer Tapioca Cake recipe so I could make it for Lunar New Year. She makes this chewy brown sugar sweetened tapioca cake (that honestly takes like boba) every single LNY. It’s a Toisan-style dessert and it’s steamed in layers, the more layers the more good luck in the new year. As a kid it was so much fun to eat them by peeling the layers apart and enjoy the gooey stickiness. At the end of our family’s dim sum Christmas party she handed me this folded piece of paper with the recipe written in Chinese and told me “you’ll figure it out". My grandma is a woman of few words but a lot of faith in her grandchildren… or eldest granddaughter who’s always down for a kitchen project.

You would think that having the recipe written down would mean recreating this recipe would be a breeze. I’ve recreated recipes from my family purely based on memory and v i b e s, but in this case I quickly found out that even having a recipe doesn’t make it easy. I’ve been practicing making this cake for the last few weeks and just in the knick of time for Lunar New Year, I confidently feel like I’ve figured it out. At first, I felt like I was on the Great British Baking Show attempting a technical challenge with a barebones ingredients list and simple instructions to just “make the cake”.

I had my dad translate the recipe for me because I can’t read Chinese and here’s what he got:

One bag of tapioca starch.
Rice flour (potentially glutinous rice flour?) 3 ounces
Yellow sugar 8-10 ounces.
Water 16 ounces with starch.
16 ounces boiled water with sugar.

Each layer steam 5 minutes.

Awesome! Thanks, Dad!

Using some detective skills, I figured out that 1 bag of tapioca starch is most likely 16oz. Yellow sugar refers to Chinese brown slab sugar but my mom has seen my grandma use good old fashioned brown sugar.

The water amounts with the starch and the sugar tripped me up a little bit. At first, the amount of water felt like too much and I was also questioning why the water couldn’t be combined and simmered with the sugar instead of adding in two batches. I tested a few versions adjusting the water and combining the water amounts with disastrous results. Just trust the recipe, Kristina. But my failed attempts taught me a lot about the recipe and helped me understand why it works and the details to pay attention to so you get the a delightfully chewy brown sugar tapioca cake.

Tips for the luckiest tapioca cake!

1. When you melt the brown sugar in the water, be careful to not over heat the water. If it’s too hot when you add it to the starch, it will gelatinize and create a thick dough instead of a wet batter.

2. Don’t steam too hot. I was steaming in a dutch oven and my water was barely simmering, but there was still a lot of steam. If your water is boiling, it will be too hot and cause the layers of the batter to bubble and be uneven.

3. Remember to keep mixing the batter between layers. The tapioca starch has a tendency to settle to the bottom so give it a stir before scooping the batter.

4. Make sure each layer is fully cooked before you move on to cooking the next layer. You can tell the layer is cooked through when it’s no longer pale and opaque. The cake should have some translucency. When you remove the lid of the steamer to check on it, give it a few seconds for settle and you’ll see if the layer of tapioca is set.

This recipe is very simple but it’s all about the details! Just keep these few things in mind, use a kitchen scale for most accurate results, and trust the process! Wishing you all an amazing Lunar New Year! I’m going to make 100 dumplings and 50 spring rolls now!

Pau Pau’s 8 Layer Tapioca Cake

makes two 8-inch round cakes

---

284g (10oz) brown sugar

900g (4 cups) water, divided

454g (16oz) tapioca starch

85g (3oz) regular rice flour or glutinous rice flour (both produced similar results)

Oil for brushing

1 teaspoon toasted sesame seeds

1. In a saucepan, combine brown sugar and 450g (2 cups) water. Heat over medium heat and melt the sugar while stirring constantly. Once the mixture is warm, with wafts of steam, turn off the heat.

2. In a large bowl, mix to combine tapioca starch and glutinous rice flour. Add 450g (2 cups) of cool water and mix to combine with a spoon (it’s okay if it doesn’t totally combine right away). Add the warm brown sugar water and mix with a spoon until completely smooth and combined. The starch tends to stick to the bottom so make sure to scrap the bottom.

3. Prepare and warm up your steamer set up. Heat up the water until just barely simmering. Brush a 8” round cake pan (any similar size dish will work fine) with oil. Pour between 1/3 to 1/2 cup of batter into the pan (amount varies depending on the vessel). Place in the steamer and steam until the layer is set and translucent, 5 to 6 minutes. Give the batter a mix and then pour another layer. Steam and repeat until the cake has 8 layers. Sprinkle sesame seeds over the surface of the cake.

4. Allow the cake to cool in the pan on a wire rack until warm to the touch or fully cooled (it’s less sticky as it cools). Slide an offset spatula around the edges of the pan. Try to get under the edge of the cake and lift/pull the cake out of the pan. Oil the blade of your knife and cut the cake into smaller pieces.

5. Serve immediately or store in an airtight container for up to 3 days.