Puto Bumbong

Ingredients

• 1 cup pirurutong (black glutinous rice)
• 2 cups white glutinous rice
• 1 1/2 tsp fine salt
• Water, for soaking
• 80 g unsalted butter, softened, plus extra for greasing
• 3/4 cup muscovado sugar
• 1 1/2 cups freshly grated coconut
• 1 tbsp toasted sesame seeds
• Banana leaves, cut into serving strips

Before you cook

• Soak the pirurutong and the white glutinous rice in separate bowls of cold water with half the salt in each, for at least 12 hours and up to two days.
• Grease six bamboo tubes or metal moulds generously with butter.
• Pass the banana leaf strips over a flame until glossy and pliable.
• Grate the coconut fresh if you can; frozen grated coconut thawed and fluffed is the next best thing.

Steps

1. Drain both soaked rices in a fine sieve and leave them to shed water for 20 minutes.
2. Spread the drained grains on a clean tea towel and pat them until they are damp rather than wet.
3. Blitz the pirurutong in a food processor to a coarse, sandy meal with no whole grains left.
4. Blitz the white glutinous rice the same way in a separate batch.
5. Combine the two meals in a bowl and rub them together with your fingertips until the colour is an even deep violet.
6. Push the mixture through a coarse sieve to break up any lumps, which is what keeps the finished cake light.
7. Bring a steamer of water to a hard, rolling boil.
8. Spoon the rice meal loosely into the buttered tubes, filling them about three-quarters full without pressing it down.
9. Stand or lay the tubes in the steamer, cover, and steam for 8 to 10 minutes over full heat.
10. Push a skewer through one tube to check; the cake should be set and springy, so give it 2 more minutes if it smears.
11. Push each cylinder out onto a strip of banana leaf as soon as it leaves the steamer.
12. Brush the top generously with softened butter so it melts straight in.
13. Shower each cake with muscovado sugar and a thick handful of grated coconut.
14. Scatter over the toasted sesame seeds and serve at once, before the cake firms up.