Snacks

Kuih ketayap (also known as Kuih gulung, kuih lenggang, and kuih dadar) is a traditional Malaysian crepe roll snack. It is a pandan flavored pancake roll with grated coconut filling that has been cooked with palm sugar. This snack is also commonly found in Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei and Thailand.

Due to popular demand from my Facebook and Instagram, I’m sharing the recipe to the kuih ketayap rolls I made today.

A few important notes before we begin.This pancake roll recipe was mainly adapted from Andrew Kow’s Malaysian Kuehs and Snacks cookbook. I have tweaked the recipe in enough places that if you made the original it would be a different experience altogether.

I’ve also made kuih ketayap a number of times, using different recipes from different professional Malaysian chefs and cooks. I think it is important to note that there are many versions of kuih ketayap out there, and you don’t only need to make one version for the rest of your life. With that said, this version is a keeper for me.

WHAT IS PANDAN?

Pandan, or screwpine is a tropical plant with fragrant leaves. It is commonly used to flavor foods in Southeast Asia. This recipe uses fresh pandan leaves, which yields the best tasting rolls. I like fresh pandan because the fragrance is incomparable! it does not have a synthetic pandan taste or green food coloring. The green from the pandan is plant-based chlorophyll, and it is full of nutrients like beta carotene.

If you can’t get fresh pandan, technically other types of pandan extract work too. I would use natural pandan extract either in powder or liquid form, and refrain from synthetic pandan flavoring. You can skip the pandan extraction step if you’re using pre-made pandan extract. Everything in the recipe, including liquid volume remain the same.

LET’S TALK ABOUT SUGAR-LEVELS!

This is a lower GI, lower sugar recipe. The filling uses pure palm sugar with no added table sugar.

(There’s only 1 tbsp of sugar in the batter).

One of the things I tend to do with almost every recipe I come across, is to reduce the sugar and salt levels. This reductive bent is mainly for health reasons, but also for taste. Since I have a sensitive palate, I find most dessert recipes cloyingly sweet, and uncomfortably salty. In my opinion, desserts and snacks that are overly sweet take away all the subtleties of flavor and fragrance. The sweetness coats the throat, and the sugar is so dominant that you can’t taste the complex flavors of the food coming through.

I do what I need to do to dial back the sugar until it reaches a sweet spot that doesn’t drown the rest of the flavors. My general rule of thumb and preferred range of sweetness is between 1/4-1/2 the level of most recipes out there. Most of the time that looks more like 1/3 of what the parent recipe reads.

It was no different for Andrew Kow’s recipe. I really appreciated his recipe, but it does not perfectly reflect my preferences. I cut out at least half the palm sugar when it came to the filling, added a pinch of salt, and also tweaked the batter a bit. The last time I made kuih ketayap (using the late Chef Ricky Ng’s recipe), I’ve had to also cut the sugar by more than half, because it was just too sweet when I followed his recipe exactly in the past.

I’d say try my ratios first. It’s plenty sweet, and it’s more like the better coconut pancake rolls you’d find in Malaysia and Singapore. If the filling is not sweet enough, you can always add more sugar in later attempts.

BATTER

The batter is everything. What I like about Kow’s recipe is the addition of glutinous rice flour, and corn starch to the batter. I think that it adds a slight bounce to the bite, which makes the kuih ketayap more like the rolls I remember getting from the pasar malam and tamu.

There are simpler recipes out there that call for the use of all-purpose flour only. If you don’t have corn starch and glutinous rice handy, you can just use APF. Just remember to work your batter a little to activate the gluten in the flour so that it binds and have a bit more chew. You might also need to make your crepe 1mm thicker if you’re just using APF. You want the crepe to hold the filling and not fall apart.

In Kow’s recipe, he calls for 3 eggs and 1 tsp of salt. I reduced the salt to 1/2 tsp of kosher salt to keep it low sodium for health reasons. If you want the savory notes to hit stronger, you can use 1 tsp of kosher salt, but I’d advice against using 1 tsp of sea salt. That would be too salty in my opinion.

I also had to add more flour to thicken the batter, because it was too wet. I followed Kow’s liquid measurements to the T, so the wetness might have been because I used larger eggs than he did. My recipe takes egg size inconsistency into consideration. If I were to make this professionally, I would measure the beaten eggs in volume instead of number of eggs. But since I am not making it to sell but just to eat at home, we’ll just adjust the batter with water and flour in increments of 1/2 tbsp each time.

FILLING

A bit of insight sharing from my years of trial and error… There are two types of filling for kuih ketayap; a water-based and an oil-based one.

Julie Wong of the Nonya Flavours cookbook uses a water-based filling for her kuih tayap, and Andrew Kow uses oil for his. I’ve tried both water and oil-based fillings, and prefer the oil-based filling better.

This is because the grated coconut can be a little dry and gritty. The oil helps to lubricate the filling make it easier to eat. It’s a less messy experience in my opinion, though there are people who embrace the messy. Moreover, frying the grated coconut with a bit of oil really releases the coconut flavors and aromas that the water-based method does not.

For those reasons, I prefer the oil-based filling. If you want to make it healthy, you can do water-based filling. The filling might be less malleable, but if you’re not too particular about the finer details and just want an edible roll, it’s not going to be an issue. (Unless it is!) 😀

As for the grated coconut, fresh is best. Ideally, coconut that has been grated by this type of grater works best. If you can’t get it fresh, there’s always frozen ones that you can get at your nearest major Asian market (Indian and Southeast Asian markets). That’s what I use for convenience and for today’s kuih ketayap.

Now you know what a good kuih ketayap looks like, let’s get ready to make some!