Sweet Potatoes in Gula Melaka Syrup is a twist on a sweet soup dessert using palm sugar instead of regular sugar syrup. Simple, fragrant, and delicious.
Sweet soups (tong sui) are very popular in Malaysian Chinese cuisine. They are usually quite light as compared to other kinds of desserts and require only a few ingredients. Perhaps most important is that they are very quick and easy to prepare. This Sweet Potatoes in Gula Melaka Syrup uses only a handful of ingredients and takes less than 30 minutes to prepare. It is hard to beat that especially when you are in a pinch.
This dessert usually comes in a clear ginger flavored syrup like this one. Since I have a good stock of gula melaka (palm sugar) at the moment, I decided to treat myself and use a little of it in this dessert.
Gula Melaka is a little less sweet than regular sugar and so a little more is needed to sweeten the soup. If you do not have gula melaka, please use brown sugar.
You can use any kind of sweet potatoes you have on hand. I used one I purchased at my regular grocery store which is usually orange in color and a purple one I purchased at the Asian market. It will probably look much prettier if I had a yellow flesh sweet potato. If you are in Malaysia or Singapore, you should not have a problem getting yellow sweet potatoes. They are the norm over there.
INGREDIENTS
- 2½ cups water (600ml)
- 2 pandan leaves (shredded and knotted)
- 1 inch ginger (peeled and crushed) (30g)
- ½ cup gula melaka (shaved) (75g)
- 2 small sweet potatoes (peeled and cut into ¾ inch cubes) (1 lb/450g)
INSTRUCTIONS
- Combine water, pandan leaves, ginger, shaved gula Melaka, and sweet potatoes in a medium saucepan. Bring syrup to a boil. Stir to dissolve sugar.
- Reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Turn off stove.
- Remove and serve warm or chilled.
NUTRITION
This dessert turned out to be quite fragrant and delicious with the use of gula melaka and pandan leaves. Do give it a try.
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