Gan Chin Lin’s Strawberry & Aduki ‘Potong’ Cream Cake
A vegan cake inspired by Singaporean coconut milk potong ice pops. Words and images by Gan Chin Lin.
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Welcome to Vittles Recipes! This summer we are featuring some of our favourite cooks as guest recipe writers. Our regular roster of columnists will start up again after a well-deserved break. This week’s guest writer is Gan Chin Lin. You can read our archive of cookery writing here.
Gan Chin Lin’s Strawberry & Aduki ‘Potong’ Cream Cake
A vegan cake inspired by Singaporean coconut milk potong ice pops. Words and images by Gan Chin Lin. Additional image of ‘es potong’ by Sharanya Deepak.
A mauve oblong on a wooden stick with crushed red beans peeking through, a marriage of dusky, purple coconut milk and malty, almost chocolate-y aduki beans. This is ‘es potong’ or ‘aiskrim potong’ – the traditional popsicle of Singapore, an old-school ice cream. The coconut milk-based ice pops come in flavours including durian, sweetcorn, mung bean, yam, and mango, but the aduki bean (‘kacang merah’) flavour is the most iconic. They're also my mum's favourites. In the public housing estate where she grew up, her Malay neighbours ran a thriving home-based business, selling cold potong straight from their doorstep to eager customers.
‘Potong’ means ‘cut’ or ‘slice’ in Malay, a name that recalls the dessert’s beginnings as a literal slice of a larger ice cream called the ‘9 inch half’ (which, appropriately, was 9.5 inches long) that was made for sharing. These ice creams became widespread with the advent of mass refrigeration in the 1930s and 1940s. How the canon of bean-based flavours came to be defined isn't clear. One common tale depicts housewives freezing leftover dessert soups (such as red bean or mung bean) as ice lollies; the influence of the water-based mung bean and aduki popsicles, 雪條, which were popular around the same time in Hong Kong and Shanghai, is another potential origin story. What we know for certain is that the simple fact that in Singapore and much of Asia, legumes and sweet starchy vegetables are abundant and have long been used in traditional sweet making, while their combination with coconut products is a perfect articulation of the region’s notions of ‘rich’ and ‘sweet’.
In this potong-style cake, I use buttery aduki and coconut milk to inflect the concept of strawberry shortcake. Strawberries and aduki are a natural match: both carry a floral sweetness, but the berry has just enough tartness to create a dynamic tension with the beans (you might have seen this principle at work in the iconic Japanese treat ichigo daifuku). The cream has a gelato-like mousse-y texture – I wanted something that melts in your mouth like ice cream. And whereas commercially produced aduki bean potong use rose colouring to achieve their pink shade, ours is au naturel. I’ve used walnuts for the sponge – their woodsy, bittersweet tannins are a gentle nod towards the sensation of hitting a wooden popsicle stick when working through a potong. Additionally, the cake is served in potong-style slices, per the ice pop’s origin as a slice of a 9 inch half.
This cake requires quite a bit of pre-planning and patience. Although all the steps involved are quite simple, there’s a fair bit of inactive chilling time. Luckily, all the elements can be made a couple of days ahead, which creates flexibility for you to fit the preparation around your schedule. Each individual component of the cake can also be served on its own or used in other contexts, which is why they are presented as individual recipes, followed by the final assembly instructions.
Strawberry aduki potong cream cake
Aduki bean jam (make up to two days ahead)
You can find various Japanese and Chinese brands of aduki beans in Asian supermarkets (they might also be called adzuki beans or red beans). All work perfectly, but the Japanese varieties are generally larger. This recipe makes more jam than you need for the cake as an insurance policy. I’ve included some suggestions in the notes below for how to use up and store any leftovers.