Homemade Cendol

For you, Yuan Horng. Hope u can make it in the US. ;)

This is a Malay dessert , served with palm sugar syrup and coconut milk. When I was small, I used to think that it's made of worms! Well, they do look like green worms, wriggling around. Of course, I still ate them, worms or not.

The Singapore version uses only green bean flour. But the Malaysian version uses rice flour, or maybe mixed with some tapioca starch. Tapioca starch is more stretchable, whereas green bean flour gives the cendol a slightly springy texture.

So, if u can’t find green bean flour, u can just substitute it with tapioca/cassava starch.

Cendol is usually pressed with a cendol press, that looks like a murukku press, but not everybody has one at home. Or some use a metal bowl pricked with holes, or some homemade cendol use the holey ladle. The holey ladle makes the cendol short and stout. I like mine long and slender. I used to do this with the cookie press (with the piece with many small holes on)I need to think of a way that everybody can make this at home with easy to get apparatus.
And Ah!!!! I got it, a clean durable food grade plastic bag!

½ cup rice flour
½ cup green bean flour
3 cups pandan juice (1 cup loosely packed pandan leaves(washed, snipped with scissors), blended with 3 cups water, strained. If fresh pandan juice is not available, just use 2 tsp green pandan paste/essence with 3 cups of water)
1/4 tsp alkaline water

Prepare a basin of ice water. Mix the above ingredients together and cook on low heat until mixture thickens and turns glossy.
Fill mixture into a ziplock bag, snip off a small corner about 2-3mm (don't do it too big, it'll get bigger after being squeezed for some time). By using oven mittens, squeeze mixture out from bag, dropping into the ice water. Don't work slow, the mixture solidifies quite quickly!
When the cendol mixture has all been squeezed into the ice water, keep cendol in fridge together with the ice water.





5/5/09: I'm going to try other flour combinations, and will post whichever is the best. The flour composition in this post is less hard(when cold) compared to pure green bean flour cendol.

24/11/09: I tried using half tapioca starch with half rice flour. The result was DISASTROUS!! The cendol will melt. *sigh