May's Happy Gula Melaka Agar-Agar

Oh yummy!

Yes, I'm back!

After a super tiring final semester I'm starting to do serious cooking once again! Yay!

So yes, I thought it'd be nice to start off again with a simple recipe.

I love gula melaka. I mean, which Malaysian/Singaporean doesn't? And amazingly, we can actually get good quality gula Melaka here in Melbourne at good Asian grocery stores.

Vat you need:

One block of Gula Melaka/palm sugar (tip: buy the gula melaka made in Indonesia)
A few pandan leaves
1-2 packets of agar-agar powder, Swallow brand. Try to get the original flavour.
200 ml of coconut milk

How now brown cow?

1. Follow instructions on the agar-agar packet. Use about 700-900 ml (depending on how erm, hard you want your agar-agar to be) of water to dissolve the agar-agar powder.

2. Once the powder dissolves, throw in the whole block to gula melaka. If you've used just 1 packet of agar-agar powder, only use half the block of gula melaka, less you want to die of a diabetic attack.

3. Under a very low fire, stand by your little pot and dissolve the sugar. This may take a while. Be patient and talk to your agar-agar.

4. While dissolving the gula melaka, take about 4-5 pandan leaves and knot it. Chuck it into the agar-agar mixture. This gives out wonderful aroma.

5. Once the gula melaka is dissolved and the mixture is at a boiling point, mix in 200 ml of coconut milk. Do not stop stirring.

6. Bring the mixture to boil.

7. At this point your home would smell of nothing but gula melaka. Heaven. Remove pandan leaves and pour out mixture into trays. Remove some of the coconut froth. Leave aside until cool.

8. Place agar-agar into fridge. Serve cold. Yum.

Tags: gula melaka palm sugar dessert agar agar jello budget recipe