Khmer Dessert: Palm Sugar Rice Cake / Num Ple Ay

Palm Sugar Rice Cake

Num Ple Ay

The Taste of Angkor: recipe book made by Royal Embassy of Cambodia

Recipe Book with instructions, translated by Dad

Hardened Palm Sugar found in T&T Supermarket

Black Sesame Paste with Red Dates

Final product

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I decided to make a Khmer dessert for Christmas lunch, and I found it through my parents' gift "The Taste of Angkor". This recipe caught my eye because it would be easy to make and was one that I had not eaten before.

I was thinking creatively and decided to have an additional flavoured filling to pair with the palm sugar. I thought that just having plain palm sugar would be unbalanced as a dessert. I chose chinese sesame paste because the flavour is fragrant with the nuttiness from the sesame, and it could act as a substitute for the roasted white sesame.

Day one of testing the recipe, I started with the filling because I had to figure out a solution on how to add the fillings into the dough without messing up the integrity of the dish. The only palm sugar I had at home was in the paste form, not the hardened one required for the recipe. My idea was to freeze the palm sugar in silicon molds and cut them into smaller pieces afterwards. After 12 hours in the freezer, the paste remained a paste and did not freeze into solid like what I had anticipated. The very next day, I purchased the hardened version of palm sugar at T&T. 

I was successful with the sesame paste because the instructions to make the sesame paste dessert required hot water. With a higher water content than the palm sugar paste, it froze solid! Next was the rice cake dough.

Day two of testing the recipe, I made the rice cake dough and it was very soft, more than I expected. The first batch I made were with the hardened palm sugar. Honestly speaking, I thought the palm sugar would add more flavour to the dish. It did not, in fact it simply tasted like rice cake and sugar together. I found it too sweet so, the second batch I made were with the frozen sesame paste. This also fell short of my expectations. The flavour was not very nutty and the sweetness did not come out. Perhaps it may be because I went from tasting one ultra sweet to one mildly sweet. 

If I were to create a new version of this dish, I would not use hardend palm sugar but use the palm sugar paste as a dip. The filling in the rice cake would be the sesame paste, albeit higher concentrated amount of sesame paste to water. I would keep the silicon mold and freezing method for the sesame paste filling. Another trial will be done with this in mind. 

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