Most interesting to me is the strong historical Malayan connection to this seaweed-derived product, which is evidenced by the fact that its international name today is the Malay word ‘agar’. The entry on SinglishDictionary.com lists fascinating colonial references to agar in Malaya from 1813, 1820 and 1894 and opens a little window on how this Southeast Asian item made its way further afield.

While some equate agar agar with Japanese kanten, this information says that in Japan, kanten and agar-agar refer to separate products made from different kinds of seaweed and have different textures. The additional details here suggest that outside of Japan, this distinction may not be so important and the term ‘agar-agar’ is used in a broad fashion to denote a whole family of seaweed products.

Agar has the advantage of not melting, which is very handy in our tropical weather. It can even set without refrigeration.

Another wonderful thing about agar agar is that you can use it to gelatinise (is there such a word?) almost any liquid, except vinegar and foods high in oxalic acid, which includes spinach, chocolate and rhubarb (read more in this article).

Agar agar comes in two forms — long strips and powder. I assume that back in grandmother’s time, they didn’t have agar agar processed into easily-spoonable powder and packaged in handy single-use sachets that we use today :), so this most likely refers to the strips.

To use agar strips, rinse in cold water first and leave them to soak until softened. Then boil in the required amount of liquid until it melts.

I have no idea why there are two sets of quantities for the Chye Yean with one being twice as diluted as the other. The amount of liquid used affects the hardness of the agar jelly when it sets, so make it less dilute if you like a ‘crunchy’ texture.

Tahils and katis (“K.” in the recipe notes )are such nostalgic measures of weight :), bringing to mind vivid memories of following grandmother to the wet market as a young child. See this conversion table for katis (cattys) and tahils to metric or imperial measurements.

Thanks to the fabulous readers here, I’ve got it all sorted out now. Please see the comments from Chris, Lily Ng and Claire below.

Fun Kor 粉果 is a steamed dumpling, originally a Teochew  dish, but more commonly known by its Cantonese name. I surmise that this is because of the Teochew (Chiu chow) influence in Hong Kong. Fun Kor is commonly found in dim sum, a style of eating that developed in Hong Kong.

In the comments below, reader Claire also provides instructions on how her mother makes the Fun Kor skin, using similar basic ingredients to my grandmother, as well details of the meat filling. I’m sure you can find other recipes on the internet and in dim sum cookbooks. Claire refers to ‘jicama‘, which is known in Singapore/Malaysia as bangkuang.

So grandma’s notes here are only for the flour proportions for the Fun Kor skin. You’ll need to add water and cooking oil as well, not to mention making the filling of your choice.

Tung mean” flour refers to wheat starch, which goes by various Chinese names: 澄 麵粉／澄粉／澄麵, usually used in dim sum dishes to give a glossy sheen to the food. It’s easily available in Singapore supermarkets that have a good selection of Asian flours, such as NTUC, or baking suppliers like Phoon Huat.

Grandma wrote ‘coconuts’ but experienced cooks would know she was referring to the number of coconuts needed to produce the correct amount of coconut milk (here’s how to do it using grandma’s traditional grater).

According to Wikipedia, the name srikaya, usually shortened to kaya, is derived from ‘the word meaning “rich” in Malay’, and being based on eggs and coconut milk, rich it certainly is! Locals hoping to cut down on their cholesterol intake know that this is one food to reserve for occasional treats only :).

I’ve only ever known this as kaya, and grandmother’s notes are the first time I’ve seen it called sri kaya, which leads me to surmise that the full name was in common usage in the past but has long since been shorted, with the original word now disappeared from popular knowledge.

The use of coconut milk also pandan leaves (in most kaya recipes) points clearly to Southeast Asian origins, either Malay or Indonesian, and the Philippines have their own version as well. Kaya is also very much associated with Straits Chinese (nonya) cooking, which is hugely influenced by Malay and Indonesian cuisine. A popular type of nonya steamed desert is kueh salat, glutinous rice stained with blue colouring from the butterfly pea flower (bunga telang) and topped with kaya.

However, perhaps what Singaporeans think immediately at the mention of kaya is kaya toast, which some overseas friends have told me is their favourite Singapore food :). Kaya toast is found in traditional local coffee shops, known colloquially as kopi tiam, which historically have often been the preserve of the Hainanese community.

Many Hainanese worked in the food industry, often as personal cooks for the colonials as well as wealthy Asians. Bread and toast formed a daily staple in colonial Singapore, and not just amongst the European population. In Hainanese kopi tiam, western bread in the form of charcoal-grilled toast was spread with sweet, rich local kaya.

These days, traditional enterprises have adopted modern business strategies, Ya Kun Kaya Toast being one of them. With humble origins in the 1930s, it is now a franchise in six countries outside of Singapore with a distinct branding leveraging off its long history and a nostalgia for the old days.

Grandma’s notes won’t help you much if you don’t already know how to make kaya, so this webpage describing someone else’s grandmother’s kaya method might prove very useful. Although I’ve never made kaya myself, I’ve heard it requires plenty of patient stirring to get a good consistency. Nowadays, many people use a microwave shortcut, a slow cooker or even the jam function on a bread maker. What’s also becoming more popular now is a vegan, eggless pumpkin version that is not only healthier but much easier to prepare.

So — custard or jam? well, actually I don’t think it matters :).

The recipe uses hydrogenated vegetable shortening, under the Spry brand name. I’ve commented on the history, use and health considerations of using Spry or its competitor brand, Crisco in an earlier posting. My personal choice would be to use butter, which would probably also give a better taste.

This recipe uses hydrogenated vegetable shortening, under the Spry brand name. I’ve commented on the history, use and health considerations of using Spry or its competitor brand, Crisco in an earlier posting. My personal choice would be to use butter, which would probably also give a better taste.

Instead of butter, this recipe uses hydrogenated vegetable shortening, under the Spry brand name. I’ve commented on the history, use and health considerations of using Spry or its competitor brand, Crisco in an earlier posting. My personal choice would be to use butter, which would probably also give a better taste.

For the filling and icing, please see:
Chocolate/Coffee Filling
Chocolate Water Icing

Don’t let the ‘rub butter in flour’ bit fool you into thinking this uses the rubbing-in method (see Plain Scones). Here, it is just a way to incorporate solid butter. Other recipes melt the butter and combine it with the wet ingredients. Personally, I’m lazy to melt butter when I make muffins, and usually use oil instead :). A cooking oil with a neutral flavour is best, but coconut oil will give a strong tropical flavour if that’s the effect you intend to produce.

For more on oven temperatures, see grandma’s notes here.

The second type of ‘Drop Scones’ is not made from dough, but a batter, and its alternative name, ‘Scotch Pancakes’ reveals what it’s most similar to. ‘Drop Scones’ are considered a traditional Scottish recipe, as you can read here.

The photos here show you what Scotch Pancake style Drop Scones look like, and the recipe also provides ideas for eating them with savoury toppings.

It’s this pancake variation that grandmother’s recipe below refers to. This is evident from the way the ingredients are combined (straight mixing, no rubbing-in) and the reference to a ‘batter’ that must be left to stand.

Without any clear instructions for the quantity of milk (and I’m not sure how much exactly ’1 Breakfast cupful’ is!), it would certainly help if you were already familiar with working pancake batters to be able to judge the correct consistency by sight. Don’t forget to use self-raising flour or else add some baking powder.

You may wish to compare this recipe with grandma’s Pancake recipe as well as check out some buttermilk variations (buttermilk assists the rise of the batter and tenderises it) here and here. You’ll notice the second recipe substitutes milk+vinegar for buttermilk, you can also use lemon juice,citric acid or cream of tartar to create the same result; read about buttermilk substitutes here.

This Apple Scone recipe continues the scones series started with my last entry on Plain Scones.

There seem to be truncated instructions here as I have my doubts as to whether a haphazard lumping together of the ingredients below will produce a scone! My advice would be to please follow the instructions for the rubbing-in method in the Plain Scones entry. There’s no quantity for the cream either so is it for topping, or including in the mixture?

The shaping of this scone is also rather unusual. Instead of the usual single-serve pieces cut out from a large piece of dough, this is baked in one entire whole. I’ve never come across a scone like this before!

Also, the instructions call for a low oven temperature, which is quite different from my experience using high temperatures (about 200°C) to force the scones to rise.

Good luck with the recipe and I’d love to hear from anyone who has made a scone like this before!

You might also want to read the recipe for:
Drop Scones (which is actually type of pancake)

And I was the one to test them out for her :). Although grandma was an avid baker in her younger years as you can see from this collection recipes, I don’t recall actually seeing her bake something herself. Though of course she guided my childhood interest in baking and always supervised my every move in the kitchen!

More recently, in the last few years, scones became one of my foolproof staples through regular practice as I used to bake them about once a fortnight. Grandma was the happy beneficiary and especially on her birthdays, I knew she would appreciate hot scones fresh from our home oven more than any fancy cake I might buy.

Scones are typically made with the rubbing-in method as mentioned in this recipe here. Working with the the tips of the fingers only and making sure your hands are cool is important to prevent the butter from melting. These days, I use two knives instead – less messy and definitely keeps the temperature down :).

The quantities in this recipe are very straightforward. Self-raising (SR) flour is used and I like the fact that it doesn’t rely on buttermilk, which is expensive to buy in Singapore. However, recently I discovered cheap and easy substitutes for buttermilk, which can be made by adding a bit of lemon juice or cream of tartar to regular milk (read full instructions here). However, I haven’t yet tried scones using this. Personally, I would also omit the sugar as it’s not necessary and you won’t notice its absence after you have heaped cream/butter and jam on your scone!

As long as the rubbing-in is done correctly and the appropriate amount of liquid added, the scones should come out very nicely. Delia Smith teaches that the secret to good scones is to rolling them out at least one inch thick; her page on How to Make Scones is extremely useful.

Another trick is to make sure the dough is not too dry. In fact, I usually work with a dough so wet and soft that instead of struggling to roll it out and use a biscuit cutter, it’s much easier to shape it into a large round and slice into wedges.

One problem with rolling out is that the more times you do it (especially when reworking the odd bits of dough leftover from cutting out the round shapes) the tougher the end result. A cool kitchen tool I have to assist in such circumstances is a batch cookie cutter for five hexagonal shapes joined together in a honeycomb pattern (from Lakeland, but unfortunately they don’t seem to sell this anymore). This eliminates wastage between the shapes or leftover bits that need to be rolled out a second time.

My favourite way to eat scones is with very thick and heavy cream — preferably clotted cream — plus a touch of jam — yes, an English Cream Tea :). I’ve given up ordering cream tea at eateries, both here and in England as the cream is usually disappointingly light and fluffy. Anyway, having just bought some lovely Carrefour organic crème fraîche (I like the way it’s very thick and just gently soured), I think a batch of homemade scones might be coming up very soon :)!

Although best fresh from the oven, scones freeze well. The sooner you pop them into the freezer, the fresher they will taste when you reheat them later.

Do also check out the recipes for:
Apple Scone
Drop Scones (which is actually type of pancake)