Easy Authentic 10-Minute Kaya Jam (Palm Sugar Kaya or Pandan Kaya)

Easy Authentic 10-Minute Kaya Jam (Palm Sugar Kaya or Pandan Kaya)

Course: Condiment

Cuisine: Indonesian Chinese, Malaysian, Singaporean

Prep Time: 10

Cook Time: 10

Total Time: 20

Servings: cup

Calories: 1257kcal

Author: Marvellina

Learn how to make easy, authentic, smooth, and creamy Hainanese kaya / srikaya jam in 10 minutes instead of hours of stirring. Recipe is for both palm sugar kaya jam or pandan flavored kaya jam.

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Ingredients

200 ml canned coconut cream see notes 1
4 egg yolks from large eggs beaten

For regular kaya:

50 gr white sugar you can reduce amount of sugar to your taste
50 gr palm sugar
3 pandan leaves/screwpine leaves knotted

For pandan flavor kaya:

½ tsp pandan essence or use 50 ml of pandan juice extract (see notes 2)
80 gr white sugar you can reduce amount of sugar to your taste
20 gr palm sugar

Instructions

Separating egg yolks from the whites:

Make sure you separate the egg yolks from the white very carefully. Leaving as little trace of egg whites as possible when separating. If there is a trace of egg whites, you can run the egg yolks through the sieve. This is to ensure you don't get any lumps in the kaya. Otherwise, beat the yolks until smooth just using a regular fork is perfectly fine. Run it through the sieve if you want to

Tempering the egg yolks:

Place coconut cream, sugars, pandan leaves (for regular kaya), pandan extract or pandan juice (for pandan kaya) in a saucepan
Cook over medium heat and just cook until the sugar melted. It shouldn't be boiling, just heated to warm

Tempering the egg yolks:

With one hand still beating the egg yolks, the other hand holding the saucepan with coconut cream, add 1/4 of the coconut cream mixture
Continue doing so several times
Then you can pour the egg mixture back to the saucepan
Stir to mix everything and then place this on the stove over low-medium heat
Continue to stir over low-medium heat. Don't crank up the heat too much as the texture won't be as smooth. The mixture started to thicken for me at around 8 minutes mark and continue to stir
At around 10 minutes mark, the kaya should coat the back of the spatula thickly but still has that spreadable consistency. The kaya will continue to thicken once it cools down completely. So don't cook it until it's too thick. Discard the pandan leaves. If you use pandan juice instead of extract, you may need to cook just a bit longer to get to this consistency. Remove from the heat
If the texture of the kaya is not as smooth, you can use a blender or an immersion blender to smooth out the mixture

Storing:

Once the kaya has cooled down completely, transfer to a glass jar and secure the lid. Put in the refrigerator for up to 1 week. I do not recommend freezing as they tend to separate

Serving:

The kaya tends to "harden" a bit after refrigeration. There is fat in the coconut cream. Simply leave them to come to room temperature before serving and they'll soften

Video

Notes

1. Please make sure you use Asian canned coconut cream such as Kara, Aroy D, Chaokoh. If you use regular coconut milk, the cooking time will be more than 10 minutes because regular coconut milk contains more water
2. If you use pandan juice instead of pandan essence, the cooking time may be a little over 10 minutes because of the extra liquid added, but it shouldn't take you too long either

Nutrition