Eat Hipster Muah Chee In Flavours Like Pandan Kaya, Matcha & Chocolate
The muah chee is made by a 60-year-old & branded by her daughters.
What happens when you have an intense muah chee (Hokkien glutinous rice dessert with ground peanuts) craving during the circuit breaker and find it hard to procure your fave snack? For the Chua sisters (both declined to reveal their full names) and their mum, Madam Goh Ka Hua, the solution was simple: make your own. Scouring the Internet for recipes, homemaker Madam Goh, 60, who’d never made muah chee before, found videos on how to make the gelatinous local delight. However, she couldn’t quite get the consistency of the dough right following those recipes. It took her weeks of fine-tuning (“we ate a lot of muah chee!”) to perfect it. “The main ingredients are actually the same,” says the older Chua sister, who’s in her early 30s and works in healthcare. “We just had to tweak the proportions.”
Muah chee dough is typically made using sesame oil, pork lard or shallot oil, glutinous rice flour and water. But unlike regular muah chee you find outside, Madam Goh’s version substitutes pork lard/shallot oil with sunflower oil. “Shallot oil and pork lard are more fragrant,” admits the younger Chua sister, who’s in her late 20s and in banking. “But we wanted to make ours vegetarian-friendly.” Also, they have muah chee-loving friends who don’t eat shallots.
Photo: Muah Chee Boy
Business has been brisk for home-based biz Muah Chee Boy, which started operations in mid May. “It was quite popular with our friends and family, so we decided to start a Facebook page to see what would happen. We were quite surprised when we started getting a lot of orders,” says the older Chua sister, who came up with the hip branding and product design along with her younger sis. “Prior to the DIY packs (see below), we sold up to 100 individual packs a day and made a net profit of about $4,000 plus in the first month.” They will likely continue with the biz even in Phase 3 (“our mother enjoys doing it”), but have no plans to set up a brick-and-mortar shop just yet.
As both sisters have day jobs, much of the actual cooking and food prep falls on mum. “She spends about half a day making the dough, which is made in a steamer. We help out on weekends.” Orders for weekdays are for self-collection only from their home in Sengkang. Deliveries are available only on weekends and start from $2 to a maximum of $10, depending on distance. All orders have to be made in advance.
So who’s the boy in Muah Chee Boy? That’s actually Madam Goh’s grandson, the voracious muah chee-loving son of her eldest daughter (she has four daughters, though only two are involved in the biz). “That’s really him on the box,” says the older Chua. “He loves my mum’s muah chee so much, we decided to name the business after him. In fact, he’s the one who keeps asking us to come up with more flavours.”
Muah Chee Boy’s muah chee comes in five different flavours: Original ($3), Pandan Kaya ($5), Chocolate ($5), Black Sesame ($6), and Matcha ($6). You can also mix and match flavours in the yuan yang option for $6. Each individual box weighs 80 grams. “Original, Pandan Kaya and Black Sesame are the most popular. Kids love the chocolate,” the sisters tell us. They are currently exploring adding a cheese flavoured one to the mix. “It sounds strange, but we tried it with shredded cheddar cheese and it’s actually not bad. The sweetness of the peanut and the saltiness of the cheese actually works quite well together.”
Muah Chee is best eaten fresh. And the girls recommend consuming theirs within hours of delivery or a day at most. To maintain the integrity of the muah chee and cater to customers who live further away, the enterprising pair came up with a DIY option (from $12 for 300g to $30 for 1kg). This option, which can last for up to 3 days in the fridge, comes in a handy cardboard box with the pre-cooked dough and peanut topping packed separately. When ready to eat, simply cut out the portion you need, steam the dough for about 10 minutes, coat it with peanuts and snip into bite-sized chunks. If you’re using all the dough instead of portioning it out, you can simply toss everything in the box itself and serve. Convenient.
In comparison to store-bought muah chee, you’d be hard pressed to find a significant difference between the two. Texture-wise, it is just as soft and gooey, especially if you eat it warm and fresh. It is slightly firmer when cooled and has more of a bite. Because the dough is not made with pork lard or shallot oil, it is not as fragrant, but the aroma of the roasted peanut topping does cover up that shortcoming quite a bit. So overall, you’re not going to feel short-changed with this homemade version.
Using bottled nonya kaya and fresh pandan juice instead of water for the rice flour dough, this original concoction is Madam Goh’s pride and joy. The flavour is subtle at first, and is almost overtaken by the peanut topping, but gets more pronounced towards the end. It’s a little bit like ondeh-ondeh without the gula melaka centre, and we like that it’s not overpoweringly sweet.
A kiddie favourite, this version uses a mix of cocoa powder with Nutella folded into the dough. There is a slight hint of hazelnuts from the Nutella, but is lacking a rich chocolatey flavour, making it unbalanced and a little too sweet for our liking.
Made with a mix of store-bought black sesame and homemade roasted sesame paste, this certainly smelt promising. However, the first bite proved disappointing. The roasted sesame paste made it a little too bitter.
We’re sort of on the fence with this one. The first bite throws you off as the top notes of this Japanese matcha are oddly perfumey. But as we munched on, that flavour subsides and the familiar fragrance of green tea emerges. The problem is getting past that first mouthful. This is like a heavier, more peanutty version of matcha warabi mochi.
A more than satisfactory alternative to store-bought muah chee, with fun flavours to please the whole family. For the best flavour and texture, we recommend getting the DIY kit option. Warm muah chee that's fresh from the steamer is softer, gooier and plain yummier.
Pre-order (minimum order of $15 for delivery, no minimum order for self-collection) via www.facebook.com/muahcheeboy. Self-collection on weekdays at Treasure Crest, 50, Anchorvale Crescent S544629 (main entrance). Islandwide delivery available for a fee on weekends.
Photos: By Ki’ern Tan
