Happy Pi Day!

I might be reinforcing a certain geeky Asian stereotype here, but posting a pie recipe on Pi Day was just too good of an opportunity to miss. And though I’ve long traded my pi-ridden add-maths notes in favour of actual pie, I still have so much love for maths and the sciences, and it’s helped me in lotsa little ways in cooking. So in celebration of my favourite irrational constant in maths (tbh I only know of two; sorry e), I made a pie with the irreplaceable constant of Malaysian desserts – gula melaka.

For the uniniated, gula melaka (apparently anglicised as Malacca sugar?) is a type of unrefined brown sugar ubiquitous in Malaysian desserts. They’re most commonly sold in solid, cylindrical blocks, which is often dissolved in a bit of water to make a syrup. But unlike similar looking unrefined sugars like jaggery and Mexican piloncillo, which are extracted from sugar cane, gula melaka is made from the sap collected from the flower stalks of coconut palm trees. This sap is boiled until thick and caramel-like, then poured into traditional bamboo moulds to cool and harden. Which is why they’re often shaped like a bamboo joint!

In terms of flavour, it’s evocative of a deep, dark caramel, but with none of the cloy. It’s often described as smoky, butterscotch-y, and spice-tinted too. It’s essentially the Malaysian equivalent of PB&J, only 10 times better, and nowhere near as divisive.

Here’s a well-known formula for making great Malaysian desserts – gula melaka + coconut milk + pandan. And I’m serious when I say it’s the flavour profile of Malaysian desserts. Just look up ‘Malaysian dessert’ on Google Images, and I kid you not, 4 in 5 images will have something green in it (that’s the pandan), something white that’s made of coconut milk, and something brown (gula melaka), though the latter is often hidden within the dessert itself (think ondeh-ondeh & kuih koci). And before you think of Malaysian desserts as uninventive or just lazy, I’m here to tell you that it’s more the case that this flavour combination is just so utterly good that it’s hard to find anything else that comes close in the world of desserts.

Anyway, being Malaysian, it was clearly expected of me to want to add gula melaka into my Pi Day pie!

I started off with a base pecan pie recipe, an amalgamation of the dozen of pecan pie recipes I scoured on the internet. And to add a bit more character, I added a shot of espresso to the filling for a bit more depth, but more importantly, I replaced the bulk of the caster/brown sugar with the sweet nectar of the Malaysian dessert gods. I also shaved some extra gula melaka on top just to be extra (that culinary degree didn’t go to waste). So have it on its own, or serve it with some damn good ice cream and you’re all set. (OOH, try it with coconut/pandan ice cream maybe!)

Go make one. Or two. Or 3.1415926535897…