Recipe with pictures : Almond Sugee Cake

I baked one of the nicest almond suggee cake but unfortunately, I was too sick to bother taking a nice photo of them. However, I am going to note down all the steps I took to get the best, most awesome almond sugee cake. The recipe yield two large cakes and I gave one large one to the nurses in the cancer hospital where I volunteer.

This is the unflattering photo of the cake texture. It is just right, not too dense, not too fluffy. My sons loved the cake so much, they walloped it by the next day. The full recipe is over at my recipe for almond sugee cake post and I will not repeat it here as it is quite a confusing recipe.

Note that you will need three large bowls to mix three different things. One for the butter, one for the egg yolks and one for the egg whites.

The recipe calls for the frying of the semolina flour or sugee flour till golden brown. I am not sure why Rose asked to fry the semolina but after frying, the semolina does smell nice. Leave the semolina to cool down properly.

The 500 grams of butter is creamed with 100 grams of sugar till fluffy. Then, I pour in golden syrup and brandy. If you omit brandy, I read that we can replace with orange juice. If you do not have golden syrup, just omit it.

When the semolina is cool down, add them to the creamed butter and leave to stand for eight hours. However, I only leave them for 4 hours. In room temperature, please. The purpose is to plump up the semolina. Semolina is the hard part of the wheat grains.

Rose’s recipe does not use keat pneah and winter melon. However, I love these in my sugee cake. So, I took the liberty to add some keat pneah or candied and dried tangerine and winter melon strips, also candied and dried. I soak both in hot water to remove the sugar. Then, I use a scissor to cut the winter melon strips into tiny pieces. The dried tangerine was too hard so I pound it till fine. I soak them with the butter mixture.

After 8 hours of leaving the semolina and butter to stand, it is time to beat the 15 eggs yolks. Separating 15 eggs, remember to keep five egg whites separately is a messy chore. Lucky, my son helps me with it.

Above photos show the 15 eggs yolks being beaten till light yellow.

After the egg yolks are beaten, add in almond, flour and vanilla essence.

By now, things get a bit confusing.

I have three bowls of things.

1) The egg yolks mixture
2) The egg white, beaten till stiff
3) The butter mixture

A deft and skillful hand will ensure the right texture of the cake because one needs to fold in the egg yolk mixture followed by the egg white mixture. Since the recipe doesn’t use any baking powder, one need to fold in the egg white with care so that there is enough air trapped in the batter or the cake will not rise nicely. I am glad I didn’t screw up and the three bowls of egg yolk, egg white and butter mixed into one nice, light batter. I use a spatula to mix them up and quickly transfer them to the baking tin and bake immediately.

The cake turns out very beautiful. That’s why I was confident enough to give them away as a gift. Almond sugee cake is normally rather oily as it is a very rich cake. It is usually served in small bite sizes. The fragrance of the butter and brandy mixture is absolutely heavenly.

Initially, looking at the recipe given by Rose’s Kitchen was a little bit confusing. However, after I had slowly gone through them, it is not so difficult after all.