To put it simply in one sentence,
a great Cantonese sponge cake is fragrant,
fluffy, and silky.
Cantonese sponge cake is one of Tim Ho Wan’s
signature dim sum dishes.
Everyone calls me Pui jai.
I’m one of the founders of Tim Ho Wan.
Cantonese sponge cake is known as ma la gao in Chinese.
This makes it sound like it’s from Malaysia,
but in actual fact,
we don’t really know where it came from.
The most common story is that Malaysians
adapted the British’s sponge cake recipe.
And when it was brought to Hong Kong,
chefs changed the ingredients again
and came up with the current version.
If you're done eating a sponge cake
and you don’t need to drink any tea afterward, it's well-made.
Some are so dry that they will stick to your throat,
and you can’t even swallow them.
Those are the poorly-made ones.
Mak, a veteran dim sum chef,
is the mastermind behind Tim Ho Wan’s menu.
It started off as a 20-seater in 2009.
Just a year later, they were awarded one Michelin star.
The chain has branches in 10 countries today.
What makes our sponge cake special
is that we fully ferment our batter.
It has to ferment at least 24 hours.
So ours aren’t so-called “chemical sponge cake.”
Fermenting the dough long enough
makes the cake spongy and fluffy.
Most restaurants add more baking powder
and soda to mimic the texture,
instead of giving it time to ferment.
After the dough is fermented, we add eggs, custard powder,
sugar, milk powder, and condensed milk to it.
We knead the dough and let it ferment again.
This process is at least another five to six hours.
Then we add some butter and alkaline water.
After that, we can steam it.
We put around 1kg to 1.5kg (2.2lb to 3.3lb)
of batter into each steamer.
We stack them on top of one another
until it nearly touches the ventilator.
After it’s cooled down, I cut it into smaller pieces.
The cake won’t taste good if it’s light yellow.
It must be brown.
It's mainly related to whether you have
fermented the dough long enough.
If you don’t ferment it enough,
for like 24 hours like how we do it or 12 hours,
it won’t smell that great.
You can smell it even with your mask on, right?
If you see these patterns on your cake,
it also means the cake is well-made.
Dim sum chefs describe this as “the skin of a Qilin,"
a Chinese mythical creature.
The butter melts (when the batter is steaming).
As it melts, it will separate
from the rest of the ingredients and form these patterns,
which means the butter is distributed evenly.
The sponge cake is one of Tim Ho Wan’s bestsellers.
We sell around 100 pieces of sponge cakes
every day at one store.
The main selling point of Tim Ho Wan
is that our dim sums taste great.
They have to be good.
This means our food is very authentic.
The skills have passed down from many previous generations
to my generation over so many years.
All the flaws have been fixed.
Do you know how Tim Ho Wan got its name?
We were already very experienced (dim sum chefs)
when we were thinking of opening Tim Ho Wan.
We hoped this business would succeed
so we wanted to “add good luck.”