Healthy Malaysian Recipes: Flourless Gula Melaka-Coconut Cake & Gula Melaka Jam

All our malaysian recipes are packed full of flavour thanks to our abundance of amazing local ingredients. One of them would be our very own Gula Melaka. My mom’s from Melaka, so that makes me very proud..

I hope these Gula Melaka recipes will inspire you to use our local ingredients in your healthy cooking. I know most of our malaysian delicacies may be a tad unhealthy, but that gives us room for creativity. Remember, anything can be made healthy!

So, if you’re a malaysian, I’m sure Gula Melaka is no stranger to you. Gula Melaka (a.k.a palm sugar) is made from the sap of flower buds of palm trees.

When it comes to natural sweetener, my top two choices have always been raw honey and dates. I’ve never given gula melaka a thought, strangely enough. It’s only when I started noticing coconut sugar being recommended by health practitioners and industry experts that I wondered if they are the same as our gula melaka. Did some research and found out that they aren’t, but..

“I discovered that gula melaka is similarly ranked very low in GI; about 35 which is even lower than honey..”

And found more articles from doctors and diabetics testifying to it as well.

So to celebrate Gula Melaka, I decided to make a spread and a cake out of it! Hope you guys will love them as much as I do!  Here you go..

Healthy Spread: Gula Melaka Jam

Ingredients:

80gm Gula Melaka | 250ml Coconut Milk | 5 Egg Yolks | 3 Knotted Pandan Leaves

Directions

1. Add gula melaka, coconut milk, and pandan leaves into a stainless steel bowl. Heat it up over a boiling pot of water till gula melaka is full dissolved.
2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks.
3. Take the gula melaka mixture out of heat, and slowly drizzle in the beaten egg yolks into it.
4. Place the stainless steel bowl back onto the heat. Turn the heat to low, and let the mixture slowly thickens. Stir it every now and then to prevent it from clumping.
5. It is ready when the mixture has thickens, and becomes jam-like. To get a smoother texture, place the mixture in a food processor for a few minutes.

Healthy Cake Recipe: Flourless Gula Melaka - Coconut Cake

Ingredients:

4 Eggs (Separate egg yolks and egg whites) | 2 Tbsp Coconut Milk | 80gm Gula Melaka (chopped finely) | 1 ½ cup Grounded Almond | 1 Tsp Baking Powder | ¼ Tsp Cinnamon | ½ Cup Coconut Flakes | 1 Tsp Apple Cider Vinegar | Pinch of Salt

Directions

1. Preheat oven at 180C and oil your baking pan (or use a baking paper if you’d like)
2. Combine egg yolks, coconut milk and gula melaka, and beat with hand till you reach a smooth consistency (no more lumps of gula melaka).
3. In a separate bowl, add in almond meal, baking powder, and cinnamon. Mix well.
4. Add almond meal mixture into egg yolk mixture. Mix it well. Add coconut flakes, and mix it again.
5. In a separate bowl, whip up your egg whites with an electric mixer. Add salt and apple cider vinegar shortly (about 5 seconds after whipping), and whip the mixture (going from low power to the highest power on the electric mixer) till soft peaks are formed.
6. Fold in your egg whites into your batter by the spoonfuls. You’ll notice your cake batter becoming lighter as you fold in the egg whites.
7. Pour batter into baking pan, and bake for 20 minutes (or till it’s golden brown).
8. Let it cool for 10 minutes.
9. To make it a layer cake, divide the cake into 4 large squares. Spread Gula Melaka Jam over the surface of three of those squares, then stack it over one another and top the last layer with remaining square. Serve with sprinkles of coconut flakes.

Enjoy baking and eating!

Lots of love, Erina