Afternoon coffee and a 冰雪蛋糕 (Bīng xuě dàngāo)

It was 1 Am and I needed some fresh air, so I walked to the nearby convenience store and found a mochi-looking snack. I have never tried it before so I decided to try it. Apparently, it is currently the snack of the month and everyone is talking about this snack originates from china.

Over here it is called a Nagasaki Cake and I have no idea why. Perhaps it’s dango like color and has a taste similar to dango except this one is filled with a cake. Somehow, after a bite, I kept wanting to try it.

Well, it’s actually pretty exhausting just to make this delicious 冰雪蛋糕. Basically you have to make two things, cake and mochi.

For the cake, you can use a simple castella recipe or simple cake. For this trial, I whipped up some flour, egg and sugar to create the cake. It’s not the best cake there is but for the sake of trial, I didn’t mind wasting some egg.

As for the mochi, you can simply use glutinous rice flour, condensed milk, some oil, and steam it for 30 minutes. Once it’s cooled you can give some colors to the mochi or even before steaming it, simply give some color to it and you’ll have some colorful mochi.

My cake didn’t quite rise as I wanted but since this is only a trial recipe, I don’t mind it. The results look like these. It’s chewy and extremely sweet. It’s perfect for afternoon snacks and to pair with coffee of your choice. Though the result isn’t as I expected it to be, at least I know now how to make it and the basics of making it. Perhaps this trend will catch up in other places soon. Honestly, even the cake recipe isn’t that hard to make as long as you know how to bake a simple cake. Such as using a castella recipe or even a roll cake recipe.

I had coffee from Aceh from my previous coffee stocks. It’s really nice to sit down with coffee in the afternoon. Once in a while I get to see a secret meeting between javanese finches. They are often hanging around the nearby trees and are during this hour. Sometimes they also make some noises and it’s so peaceful to listen to. At least, in this area there’s that piece of nature where I can go and look for a while.