Cookbook:Awug — Indonesia

Awug is a steamed cake from Sundanese cuisine in West Java, Indonesia, made from a mixture of rice flour, grated coconut, and palm sugar. Its most distinctive feature is its shape: the batter is steamed inside a cone-shaped bamboo basket called a kukusan, which gives the finished cake a tall, cone-like form once turned out. The texture is soft and slightly grainy, with pockets of melted palm sugar running through it. It is reported as a snack sold at markets and by street vendors in West Java, often prepared in the morning and sold while still warm from the steamer. It belongs to a wider category of Indonesian steamed rice cakes (kue basah) eaten as a light between-meal snack rather than as part of a main meal. To prepare it, rice flour is mixed with grated coconut, a little salt, and water into a coarse, crumbly batter, while palm sugar is separately shaved or grated. The bamboo cone is lined with banana leaf, and the batter is layered inside in alternating stages with the palm sugar, then set over a pot of boiling water and steamed until firm. Once cooked, the cone is inverted to release the cake, which is sliced and served warm. Within the family of Indonesian steamed rice cakes, awug is distinguished mainly by its cone shape and its use of a bamboo kukusan rather than a flat mold or individual cups, a method shared with a small number of other regional snacks. The ratio of coconut to rice flour, the sweetness of the palm sugar, and the exact steaming time vary from one vendor or household to another, giving the cake a slightly different crumb and sweetness depending on where it is made.