Purple Sweet Potato Rice Cakes — The Breakfast Shop's Rice Cake, Recreated
By Vivian
Why You'll Love It
There's a breakfast shop at the gate of our neighborhood whose rice cake is something else. Then the owner went back to his hometown, handed the shop over to someone else, and I could never eat it again.
I thought about it for a long time, and last weekend finally decided to try making it. I went through several recipes and adjusted the ratios, and it worked on the first try — soft and fine, full of rice aroma, basically no different from the shop's.
Ingredients
| Ingredients | |
|---|---|
| 1½ cups (180 g) rice flour | ½ cup + 2 tsp (70 g) glutinous rice flour |
| 1½ tbsp (20 g) sugar | ½ cup (120 ml) water |
| 1 tbsp (10 g) purple sweet potato powder | |
Ingredient Notes
- Rice flour is just ground rice — don't mix it up with glutinous rice flour.
- Add the water a little at a time. You want it to hold a ball in your fist but crumble when you pinch it.
- Use pure purple sweet potato powder; the kind with sugar added makes the cake sticky.
- Line the pan with cheesecloth or parchment — don't grease it, or the edges go hard.
- Cut it into pieces before steaming; cutting after steaming crumbles it.
Instructions
-
1
Mix the rice flour, glutinous rice flour, sugar, and water together.
-
2
Sift half of the flour mixture.
-
3
Mix purple sweet potato powder into the other half and sift that too.
-
4
Put the white flour in first, then the purple.
-
5
Press it down lightly, then cut into pieces with a knife.
-
6
Cover with a cloth and steam over boiling water for 40 minutes.
-
7
And the purple sweet potato rice cake is done.
Recipe Notes
Purple Sweet Potato Rice Cakes
Purple sweet potato rice cakes: rice flour and glutinous rice flour with sugar and water, half plain and half mixed with purple sweet potato powder, sifted in layers and steamed 40 minutes. Soft, fine, and full of rice aroma.
Time Needed
Prep Ahead
- Steam and cube the sweet potato ahead of time, or mash it, and keep it ready.
- Sift the rice flours twice ahead of time — the cake comes out looser and lump-free.
- 【Yield】2 cups (250 g) total flour makes one 6-inch square cake, cut into 9 pieces.
- 【Key ratios】Rice flour to glutinous rice flour ≈ 18:7, with ½ cup (120 ml) water, 1½ tbsp (20 g) sugar, and 1 tbsp (10 g) purple sweet potato powder.
- 【Heat】Steam over boiling water 40 minutes. Don't open the lid partway through.
- 【Sifting】Sift the flour twice — the looser it is, the softer the cake. Press only lightly, never pack it down.
- 【Storage & reheating】Refrigerate 2 days, re-steam 8 minutes; it firms up a little when cold.
- 【Common problems】Raw centers mean too wet a flour or too little time. Collapsing means too much water or pressing too firmly.
Nutrition (per 100 g, estimated)
| Calories | about 260 kcal |
|---|---|
| Protein | about 4.5 g |
| Fat | about 1.5 g |
| Carbohydrates | about 57 g |
| of which sugars | about 8 g |
| Fiber | about 1.5 g |
| Sodium | about 30 mg |
Estimated from the ingredient amounts, not lab tested. One piece is about 2 oz (55 g), roughly 143 kcal, calculated at 4 / 9 / 4 kcal per g of protein / fat / carbs.