Horlick Layer Cake

Gosh this blog is really encouraging me to dig out my old faithful binder files with my butter stained recipies. The Horlick Layer Cake is really one of the family favourites. It is not as sweet as traditional layer cake but super rich because of the ingredient. When my brother was studying in Penang, he will always make sure he 'hide' some of the cake to bring back with him for his so call friend (don't understand why he can't say its for her gf!).

But bewarned, this cake takes lots of patience and time. This cake requires around 4-5 hours of steaming. Do not be discouraged by this. The result was worth it!! I tried to bake this every Chinese New Year but I skipped a minor detail last year. The cake end up going mouldy in just 3 days! Suffice to say that I learned my lesson and will never ever do that again. So, DO NOT SHORTEN THE BAKING TIME!!!!! Anyway, happy trying:

Ingredient:
Butter 250gm
Caster Sugar 3/4 cup
Flour 1/2 cup
Eggs 10 + 1
Baking powder 1/2 teaspoon
Horlick (original) 1/2 cup
Condensed milk 1 small can (about 1 1/3 cup)
Nescafe 1 tablespoon diluted in 2 spoon hot water
(You can use any other instant or decaf coffee but keep it strong!)

How:
1. Mix the butter and caster sugar with electric mixer until smooth and creamy
2. With the mixer still on at medium speed, add the 10 eggs 1 by 1 (note I typed 10. Keep the 1 egg for later)
3. Combine the baking powder and flour together and mix this gently to the egg,butter,sugar mixture.
4. Pour in the condensed milk.
5. Divide the batter into 2 bowl equally.
6. Add horlick to one of the batter and nescafe solution to the other one. Add the extra egg to the horlick batter so that the batter wont be so thick.
(Thanks Irene from Btu for making the effort to ask me!I completely forgotten about the extra egg. This shows how blur I am!)
7. You will need a steamer that you can fit your baking tray into. Normaly, I will recommend a round 8 inch tray but you can use a smaller one and bake 2 batches or using multi layer steamer, if you have one, to save time. Remember to keep the steamer at its lowest temperature or else your batter will have bubbles.
8. Greese the baking tray with cooking oil or olive oil.
9. Start by taking 1 scoop of the horlick batter (soup scoop/ladle will do very well) and spread it over the bottom of the pan. Don't worry if it start to mix with the oil.
10. Steam for about 10 min. If you see a bubble, use a long slim skewer and pierce it.
11. Pour the nescafe batter in and steam again. Repeat the process until the batter finished.
12. When you are finished with the last one, steam the whole cake for another 1 hour or until the skewer comes out from the middle of the cake completely clean.
13. Leave the cake on the rack to cool.

I know sounds like a complicated but believe me, you will get so much satisfaction when you cut the cake and see the delicate layers!