durian custard cake

Have you ever been to supermarkets and came across durians being sold "for a song"? On 10 October 2008, Da and I were doing grocery shopping at Giant Hypermarket at Parkway Parade. It was quite late at night and I suppose the durian promoter wanted to go home. When we walked past the durian section, the promoter was nowhere in sight. However, the durians had already been packed in styrofoam boxes and the prices slashed. We managed to buy a box of durians for S$2.

Now, what can we do with a box of durians? We could, of course, eat the durians on their own. However, as there were not many "seeds", I made a durian custard cake for a gathering at our home on 11 October 2008 (http://jesuslovespebbles.blogspot.com/2008/10/october-babies.html).

Ingredients

125g butter

125g castor sugar

1/4 tsp salt

200g durian flesh

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

3 eggs

20 ml coconut milk

150g self-raising flour

1/4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp custard powder

Method

1. Cream the butter, sugar and salt until fluffy.

2. Add the durian flesh and ground cinnamon and mix well to combine.

3. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

4. Add the coconut milk and mix well.

5. Sieve the self-raising flour, baking powder and custard powder together. Fold in the sieved flour.

6. Check that the batter has a soft dropping consistency. If it does not, add some more coconut milk.

7. Grease a bundt pan and dust with flour.

8. Pour the batter into the bundt pan and bake in a preheated oven at 175 degrees celsius for 1 hour.

9. The custard cake is ready if a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out clean.

10. Cool the cake in the bundt pan.

11. When the cake has cooled down, place the pan on top of a hot towel for 2 minutes. The cake will dislodge and it will be easy to remove the cake.

Tips

1. If you do not like butter, you can substitute with margarine. However, using butter makes the cake more flavourful.

2. Some durians have sweet flesh (eg. Thai durians) whereas other durians have bittersweet flesh (eg. Malaysian D24 durians). For this recipe, it would be preferable to use Thai durians.

3. You can add milk instead of coconut milk.

4. When you have folded in the flour, do not over-stir the mixture. Stop when the mixture looks even in texture.

5. As custard powder has been added to the mixture, do not be unduly surprised if the cake does not have the texture of a sponge cake. The cake is more custard-like in texture but is soft and the taste of the durian is not overpowering (which is good news for people who are not overly fond of durians but would like to give this cake a try).