Tepung Bunga

My baking buddy, Lena from Frozen Wings is hosting this month's Malaysian Food Fest, Terengganu Month. I have never been to Terengganu before and am not familiar about their speciality cuisine at all. So my search for famous Terengganu food begins. While searching from various websites for details on Terengganu and it's famous cuisines, I suddenly remembered that I have a magazine stashed somewhere from years ago that has a section on Terengganu food. Of course, I "ransacked" my cupboard and lo and behold, I still have that copy! And it was a Bahasa Malaysia (Malay) magazine, back in October 1997, gosh, exactly 15 fifteen years ago! Found the section on "Sajian Terengganu Kekal Asli" and a few nice recipes for me to try! Bingo!!

Jelita Sajian magazine, issue October 1997

These are called Tepung Bunga, one of the many traditional kuihs of Terengganu. I am curious why this is called "Tepung Bunga", when translated, Tepung is Flour, and Bunga is Flower. It is made from glutinous rice flour and coconut milk. I have seen some other version that is slightly different from this from various websites. But I like that this version uses pandan leaves, which are pounded and the juice are extracted for the natural colour, aroma and taste of the pandan leaves. 

Let's make some Tepung Bunga: 

1. Pandan leaves from my garden. Wash, clean, and snip to small pieces. 
2. I blend the leaves with some of the coconut milk in a blender.
3. Strain the juice, press out the pulp that remains on strainer to collect as much pandan juice as possible.
4. Add some salt to taste, I added in about 1/2 teaspoon, add the rest of the coconut milk, stir to dissolve the salt.
5. Pour the coconut milk mixture into the bowl of glutinous rice flour.
6. Knead to a soft dough, add a little water if appears dry.
7. Divide dough into small balls.
8. Shape each ball like a doughnut and drop in hot oil over medium-low heat. Do not let them touch each other as they will stick. Fry both sides until golden brown and cooked. Remove and drain on paper towel to absorb excess oil. Serve with caster sugar or icing sugar scattered over.

Tepung Bunga is ready! That's the page where this recipe was taken.

They puffed up when fried. Advisable to fry over low heat, as the first few cracked when I fried them over medium heat, so I reduced the heat to medium-low, and they fried up really nice. However once left to cool, they would shrink and would not look puffy anymore. According to other versions that I've read, these kueh would puff up when fried and would "deflate" minutes when taken out of the hot oil, guess this is the characteristics of this kueh!

Serve these Tepung Bunga with some fine sugar, here I have used icing sugar, scattered over. The texture of these kuih are chewy and soft, it reminds me of eating  Tang Yuen (Chinese sweet glutinous rice dessert), as both these desserts uses glutinous rice flour as the main ingredient,  but this has a slightly salty taste with the aroma and taste of the pandan leaves. These are very nice, eaten with lots of icing sugar scattered over, as the sweetness of the icing sugar goes well with the slightly salty kueh. Once they are cold and flat, they became more chewy, eat them while they are still warm.

I'm submitting this post to "Malaysian Food Fest, Terengganu month hosted by Lena of Frozen Wings"


The following recipe was adapted from Jelita Sajian Magazine, issue October 1997, I have translated the original Malay version to English Language.
Tepung Bunga
5 pandan leaves
1 cup coconut milk
300gm glutinuos rice flour
pinch of salt (I use 1/2 tsp, just right)
oil for deep frying
caster sugar for dusting

1. Pound the pandan leaves to a paste and mix with coconut milk. Strain and squeeze out juice from the pandan paste. (I chose to blend the leaves with some of the coconut milk, strain and press out the juice using the back of a spoon, as pictured above).
2. Mix the coconut milk mixture with the glutinous rice flour and knead to form a soft dough. 
3. Divide dough into small rounds and shape like a doughnut. Repeat with the rest of the dough. Fry in hot oil until cooked and golden brown. Remove and scatter with caster sugar before serving.