Steamed Chocolate Cake with Fruits

This recipe is for my sister, who horror of all horrors, doesn't have an oven in her current rented apartment! She does have a dishwasher which I'm hankering after, but I'll choose an oven over a dishwasher if I can only have one. And she has a part time helper to do the washing, so that makes her dishwasher quite redundant too. (Afternote: she doesn't have dishwasher. Worse than that, it's a steriliser!)

I have always thought steamed cake to be very Chinese, like the ones we always see on the altar table for the ancestors, or have auspicious names like 发糕, meaning rise cake (implying that your fortunes will rise like the cake).

So when I was browsing my cookbooks looking for caramelised apple recipe (Rémi bought 2 kgs of apples last Sunday, wanting to make apple tart but now looking more like making rotten apples). And voilah! Saw this steamed chocolate cake with apple recipe. And just nice, as I was steaming glutinous rice, can put my double layer steamer to better use, one heat, 2 dishes!

Actually, the recipe, from this cookbook titled "Appetizers, Finger Food, Buffets & Parties" (aka, a bible on entertaining) calls it a pudding. But the fluffy texture of the chocolate sponge makes it tastes like a cake.

It's very simple to do, just mix all the ingredients together. And fret not if you don't have a cake tin. Ceramic Chinese rice bowls will do the trick (though I used an Ikea bowl and ramekins, which didn't give as nice a round shape as a rice bowl would).

While the chocolate syrup gives the cake a luscious taste, the cake could also be eaten on its own, or topped with icing sugar, or rainbow rice. It's all up to the imagination and improvisation.

Steamed Chocolate Cake with Fruits
Serves 4
(I halved the quantity, and it was enough for 1 medium Ikea bowl and 2 small ramekins)

115g dark muscovado sugar (I used brown sugar)
1 apple (I think mixed berries or pear will go well. Recipe also calls for cranberries which I conveniently omited)
115g soft butter (to soften the cold hard butter in a minute, I 'warmed' my mixing bowl, with the cut butter in it over the steaming hot soup I was cooking)
2 eggs
75g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

Chocolate syrup
Alright, we absolutely did not follow the recipe here. Just melt pieces of dark chocolate bar with about 1 tablespoon butter. To make the chocolate more runny, add either cream or milk.

Prepare the steamer. Grease 4 heatproof bowls and sprinkle sugar with a little of sugar to coat all over. Tip out the excess sugar.

If using apple or pear, peel and core and cut into small pieces. Put them in equal portions into the prepared bowls.

To make the cake mixture, put sugar, butter, eggs, flour, baking powder and cocoa powder all together and beat well until combined and smooth. My mixture was quite sticky and didn't flow into the bowl as smoothly as I had wanted, but the cake still turned out well and shapely.

Spoon the mixture into the bowls and cover the top of each with a layer of greaseproof paper, followed by foil, tied securely with string. No rubber bands please.

Steam for about 45 minutes until the cake are well risen and firm. Well, I didn't check before turning off the heat, since the bowls are well covered.

Make the chocolate syrup.

Turn out the cake onto plates and top with the syrup.