One of the silver linings during this pandemic: it has turned even the most clueless kitchen klutz into a master chef. Or at least a wannabe contestant on The Great British Bake Off. This is what our Instagram feed tells us. In the past couple of months, people who used to only post pics of their dog/restaurant meals/dull hawker tapows suddenly boast feeds worthy of @Food52’s (ok, maybe we exaggerate). Cakes, breads, cookies, muffins — cast in a warm, carby glow — inundate our phone as we scroll through more times than is healthy each day. Even a frat boy whom we’ve only ever seen inebriated in bars cradling a mug of beer pre-Covid-19 days shocked us recently with a photo of a beautiful cherry galette that he made all by himself using our recipe. It's pretty sweet, really. Being cloistered at home to evade an ominous virus has brought out people’s desire to create comforting sustenance. Better still if it's photogenic for the 'gram. Gotta expend all that nervous energy somewhere, after all. And if not at overcrowded parks dodging faux marathoners miraculously born mid-pandemic, why not in the kitchen?

Another interesting observation: quite a few folks in Singapore don’t own ovens — especially those who cook predominantly Asian cuisine at home. This, we learned from readers who pointed it out after we posted recipes requiring the use of one. However, even those without ovens usually have a rice cooker. We saw how popular #RiceCookerMan’s recipes were on Facebook, so we thought it’d be fun to try baking a cake in one. Specifically, a moist dark chocolate cake that you make from start to finish in the pot of the cooker, with minimal washing up to do. But that’s not all, we gave ourselves another challenge…

Many ingredients are often sold out or not restocked quickly enough these days due to aforementioned aspiring #stayhome master chefs, as well as sluggish supply chains. One of them is plain (also known as all-purpose) wheat flour, the default flour used to make most cakes and cookies. So we were determined to create a cake using the more easily available rice flour. Plus, rice flour cake in a rice cooker — cute, right? Rice flour is often used in Asian cuisine, like noodles, rather than cakes. Largely because it is gluten-free and absorbs more liquid than regular wheat flour, and can thus result in dryer bakes. However, it’s not impossible — we’ve had success using it in a chiffon cake before. The trick is to ensure the batter has a higher than usual level of liquid and fat to mitigate any dryness.

We settled for a simple but luscious dark chocolate cake with rice flour for this rice cooker recipe. No whipping of egg whites, creaming or anything finicky involved — just melt the butter, sugar, milk in the rice cooker, whisk in eggs, then flour, cocoa powder and chopped choc. Press ‘cook’, go read a book, eat cake.

You’ll need a rice cooker with a non-stick pot because you won’t be greasing it (yay, less work) and will be cooking everything in it from start to end (whoo hoo, less washing up). Your cooker should also have a ‘cake’ baking function, which many rice cookers come with these days. You could use the regular 'cook' mode for the same amount of time if yours is a simpler model, but do so at your own risk.

Aside from easily accessible Thai rice flour, we also used the more budget-friendly evaporated milk to add body to the cake. Plus a bit of corn flour to lend some tenderness to its texture —we experimented with 100% rice flour and it was a bit too stiff.

We tried using only cocoa powder for this unfrosted cake to keep things fuss-free — and while the flavour was decent, we found that folding in some finely chopped dark coverture chocolate added welcome moisture to its crumb. The bottom crust on a rice cooker cake is inevitably thicker and dryer than regular bakes because of the pot’s direct contact with the heating coil, so the gooey little choc bits help somewhat. We used our fave Valrhona choc (pictured), but if you're on a budget — break up a bar of Lindt dark chocolate from the supermarket, or use whatever catches your eye at Phoon Huat.

Photo: Gourmet Food Store

A dense, soft, rich chocolate cake mottled with slightly melty pockets of chopped choc. Tip: try to use natural cocoa powder (not Dutch-processed) — it's lighter and fruitier than the alkalised, more intense Dutch-processed stuff. While we usually prefer the latter for chocolatey bakes, in this case, the chopped dark choc (with at least 66% cocoa content, preferably 70% and above) is already plenty punchy. This is a project that’s achievable even on a work night. So you can dig into good chocolate cake after polishing off the grains from your rice cooker pot on one of the endless nights spent staying safe at home.

Makes a tall 6.5-inch cake (if using 8-inch rice cooker pot, adjust cook time accordingly)

Ingredients:

190g unsalted butter, cut into cubes

200g caster sugar

200g evaporated milk

1.5 tsp vanilla extract (or rum)

2 eggs (weighing 60g each in its shell)

80g rice flour

20g corn flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp baking soda

50g cocoa powder (preferably natural, not Dutch-processed)

¼ tsp fine salt

40g dark chocolate, finely chopped (at least 66% cocoa content; preferably 70% to 72% — we used Valrhona)

Place butter, sugar, evaporated milk and vanilla extract into the non-stick bowl of a rice cooker. Switch on power and close lid for 2 mins. Open lid and stir with a spatula until the butter and sugar melt and mixure is smooth.

Remove pot from rice cooker and cool mixture while prepping other ingredients.

Gradually add eggs to lukewarm butter mixture, whisking constantly so the eggs don’t scramble. Alternatively, whisk eggs first in a jug & slowly drizzle in for easier incorporation.

Sift rice & corn flours, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa powder & salt into the pot of batter, in two parts. Whisk after first addition till just combined before adding next batch. Stop when batter looks fairly smooth — do not over-mix.

Gently fold in chopped chocolate with a spatula, sprinkling the last bits onto surface of batter.

Bake cake on ‘cake’ mode of the rice cooker for 55 - 65 mins (check from 45 mins if using a larger 8-inch rice cooker pot), or till a skewer inserted in the middle emerges with just a few moist crumbs clinging to it, and surface of cake springs back when gently pressed with finger.

Remove pot from cooker and place on a cooling rack for 5 mins before overturning it onto cooling rack — the cake should fall out easily. Allow cake to cool upside-down till just slightly warm if you can’t wait to eat it, or till completely cool if dusting it with icing sugar. The gooey choc bits are more apparent when you eat it gently warm, but the chocolatey flavour grows more intense on the second and third day.

Florence Fong