Homemade Pandan Kaya

I've been buying the ready-made "kaya" (coconut jam) all the while for bread and my bao's filling. My grandma used to cook her own kaya. When I was small, I use to ate the kaya she cook for us. Her kaya are smooth and taste heavenly yummy. I got to know from my mom that, she use duck eggs for her kaya and added caramel in it. But, unfortunately... I didn't learn from her and I don't have her kaya recipe. My mom told me, my grandma don't have any particular recipe for her kaya. She'll measure all her ingredients with her cups, bowls or by hand, she just got her own recipe ~ lol..

After learning to make the steamed buns "bao". I just wanted to make my own kaya, when think of it's free from preservatives, colouring and it taste better as well. I browse for the kaya recipe and came across this simple and easy recipe in Kitchen Caper. Looking at the the kaya in her picture, it is really smooth with it's lovely natural green colour by using screwpine leaves. But, I didn't get the smooth kaya as seen in the Kitchen Caper's blog, I think I have "overcooked" my kaya, overcooking will produces lumpy kaya (next time I shall cook it in real slow fire***)

Here is the recipe for Pandan Kaya.

(Recipe from HERE)

Ingredients:

4 eggs

330 g castor sugar (if you want sweeter kaya, pls increase the sugar to 340/350 g)

400 ml coconut milk

8-10 piece pandan (screwpine leave)

Method:

Blend pandan (screwpine) leaves with 100ml of the coconut milk in a blender. Strain to discard pulp.
In a mixing bowl, lightly beat all the eggs.
Add sugar into beaten eggs. Use a hand whisk to stir mixture until all sugar dissolves (Note 1).
Add coconut milk and pandan juice in (1) into egg mixture. Stir well.
Pour kaya mixture through a sieve (Note 2) into another mixing bowl (stainless steel preferred).
Bring a pot of water to boil. Reduce fire and place mixing bowl over pot of barely simmering water(Note 3). The fire should be really slow (Note 4). Stir kaya occasionally for the first 25 minutes. When kaya starts to thicken, stir it continuously.
When kaya reaches the desired thickness, takes at least another 1 hour, remove it from heat. Cool completely (Note 5) before storing it in a clean jar. Keep refrigerated.
Spread over bread, plain crackers, serimuka etc.

NOTES:
1. It takes longer to dissolve granulated sugar than castor sugar. Make sure all the sugar dissolves before adding coconut milk.
2. The purpose of pouring kaya mixture through a sieve is to eliminate big air bubbles, formed during the whisking process. Existence of air bubbles will result in non-consistent or lumpy kaya.
3. I suggested double boiler heating method as this method would give a considerably slow heating effect to the kaya mixture. However, if your stove does come with a slow fire function, use direct method. The whole cooking time will be reduced.
4. With the real slow fire I was using, it took about 25 minutes before kaya mixture started to thicken. After this stage, stir mixture continuously as it gets thicken faster.
5. Kaya will turn thicker when it is cool.

Happy Cooking!