Malaysian kaya toast
The perfect breakfast for when you can’t choose between savory and sweet. This dish has both; kaya toast is what you want.
Kaya toast is charcoal-grilled or toasted slices of bread with pieces of cold butter and a generous spread of kaya; a traditional, sweet custard-like spread made from coconut and eggs. It’s the perfect snack with a cup of local kopi (coffee) or the (tea) and immensely popular in Malaysia and Singapore, where there’s a Toast Box on almost every street corner where you can grab this breakfast. Alongside all this sweetness, you’re also often served two soft-boiled eggs with runny yolks and soy sauce, which you can dip your bread with the spread into.
A little strange, but very delicious
It may sound a little strange, but believe us, it’s unbelievably delicious. It’s precisely the combination of the savory eggs with the sweet kaya toast – sweet and savory, mmm! – that allows all the flavors to come into their own perfectly.
Kaya toast scene
Kheng Hoe Heng, founded in 1919, is the oldest Hainanese coffee shop in Singapore, famous for its kaya toast. It was bought in 1993 by a regular customer who renamed it Killiney Kopitiam. But it wasn’t until after 2000 that a lively kaya toast scene emerged in Singapore, when Killiney opened new outlets in shopping malls and other coffee shops also began selling kaya toast. If you’re going to Singapore, be sure to check out these places for the best kaya toast in town.
Recipe
You can easily make the jam at home with this recipe. You can get the pandan leaves you need at an Asian grocery store. And if you have any left over, simply make delicious Indonesian pancakes with them.
Also read:
- 5x sweet Indonesian snacks
- Try this surprisingly simple technique for perfect rice
- Man tests all the strange suggestions with rice and rates them
