pupudak baras — South Kalimantan, Indonesia

Pupudak baras is a steamed cake made from a thin rice-flour batter enriched with coconut milk and sugar, poured into a cone rolled from banana leaf and cooked until it sets into a soft, faintly springy sweet, somewhere between a pudding and a cake. It belongs to the Banjar culinary repertoire of South Kalimantan, where dozens of small steamed and fried cakes, known locally as wadai, are prepared for daily sale and, in greater number, for the Ramadan cake markets of Banjarmasin and Martapura. Pupudak baras sits among the rice-based branch of this repertoire, alongside cakes built on glutinous rice, cassava, or mung bean. To prepare it, rice flour is loosened with water and combined with coconut milk warmed together with palm sugar or granulated sugar, salt, and a knot of pandan leaf for scent. The batter is poured into leaf cones stood upright in a steamer basket and cooked over gently boiling water until it turns opaque and firm enough to hold its shape once unwrapped. What sets this version apart within the wider family of Indonesian steamed rice cakes is less the batter itself, which is close to several other kue, than the cone shape and the banana-leaf wrapping, which perfume the cake as it steams and give it a tapered form unlike the cylinders or discs used for related sweets elsewhere in the archipelago.