FATHER'S Day was last Sunday, and I decided to make my father a little treat. Typically, my father would ask for "Ayah's Cookies", a cookie recipe I had designed specifically for him. But this year, the man threw a wrench through our traditional Father's Day tea-time treat. He asked for akok.
If you don't know what akok is, it's because you can't usually find it outside of the Eastern states. The best way to describe it is that it's a cross between a kuih bakar and an egg tart without its crust.
It's sweet, eggy, coconut-y with a light pandan flavour to it. And while I knew the basics of it were simple, I was still extremely intimidated.
My father has extremely fond memories of his hometown — and that includes its food. So making anything from Terengganu means that it needs to be as traditional and authentic as it can be. Anything less would just disappoint him.
So, instead of just googling recipes and making adjustments, I decided to go through the ingredients and methods with my father. Surprisingly, he was more of an expert than I thought. He immediately disregarded some iffy recipes and pointed out the adjustments that needed to be made in a few others.
Apparently, the biggest issue he had with most of the recipes I found was that they didn't have enough eggs or coconut milk. He also questioned whether an akok could truly be made in a cupcake mould and an oven. But after showing him some pictures, he was a little more convinced.
So, after a couple of hours of recipe-mining and editing with my father, I settled on a plan. Then I set to work.
MAKING AKOK
Thanks to my father's guidance, making akok turned out to be rather less daunting than I had anticipated. The batter only took about 40 minutes to come together, and it had a pretty short baking time as well.
The best part was that the recipe relies on pantry staples, so I didn't even need to head to the supermarket to buy any special ingredients. However, the recipe was tedious in several ways.
Firstly, if you want to keep things as close to "traditional" as possible, you need to use a lot of pandan leaves. Each one has to be cleaned and then later blended with fresh coconut milk before sieving.
The second tedious part about this recipe is that it uses a lot of tools. I had to use a pot, a blender, a sieve, cupcake tray and three mixing bowls. So cleaning up was a bit of a chore.
However, if you are willing to look past these minor inconveniences, you are in for a treat. The recipe is easy to pull off; it is just about mixing different components until they come together before baking.
You can't really fail with this recipe. Even when I thought I had screwed things up when they ballooned in the oven like engorged mushrooms, it still turned out pretty well!
The final hurdle was getting my father's approval. While the recipe didn't fail, the akok did turn out a little thinner than usual. I had filled the cupcake moulds to the brim, so I knew I had put in enough batter. However, after they ballooned, they shrank back and shrivelled up, which made them resemble the traditional akok, albeit a little thin.
Luckily, my father loved them and ended up eating quite a lot! And just to make sure it wasn't a case of fatherly affection, I passed some to my friends who have had akok in the past. They loved them too although they did comment my version was a little thinner than usual.
AKOK-MAKING TIPS
If you would like to try your hands at making akok, there are a few things you need to be aware of.
The first is that you will need to heat your cupcake moulds before filling it. So keep your cupcake moulds in the oven while it is pre-heating to 200 degrees Celsius. After I was ready to fill my moulds, I sprayed it with a little non-stick cooking spray before ladling in the batter.
The other thing to be wary of is that your batter needs to have little to no air bubbles. The moulds I filled with more air bubbles looked less appealing because they didn't brown as well as they should have.
However, I am unsure about how to remove the air bubbles because I tried everything in my repertoire — from banging my mixing bowl on the counter a few times to sieving the mixture three times before baking. Alas, there were still air bubbles I couldn't get rid of.
TRADITIONAL AKOK RECIPE
Ingredients:
100ml water
150g palm sugar / Gula Melaka, cut into small pieces
2 tbsp granulated sugar
8 pandan leaves
200ml packaged coconut milk
6 eggs
30g all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
Method:
1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Place two cupcake moulds in the oven while it preheats.
2. Cook the palm sugar, water and granulated sugar with one pandan leaf until all the sugar completely dissolves. Set aside to cool.
3. In a blender, blend seven pandan leaves with the coconut milk, and sieve the mixture. Make sure not to have any leaf fibres in the coconut milk.
4. Mix the pandan coconut milk mixture into the sugar mixture and set aside.
5. In another bowl, mix the eggs, flour and salt until well combined, and mix it into the coconut milk and sugar mixture. Sieve the mixture a few times until most of the air bubbles disappear.
6. Remove the cupcake moulds from the oven and spray them with a non-stick cooking spray.
7. Ladle in the akok batter until each mould is almost full.
8. Bake your batter for 20 minutes or until browned.
9. Let it cool completely before serving.