Steamed Tapioca Thousand Layer Cake (菱粉糍/千層糕)

I highly recommend reading through the recipe because I include a LOT of tips on how to make the cake successfully.

My family LOVES when my mom makes a batch of this steamed tapioca cake. It's lightly sweet and wonderfully chewy. Mama Lin always cooks a tapioca thousand layer cake for Lunar New Year, along with a 年糕 (neen go, new year’s cake). Besides Lunar New Year, my mom would steam this cake for parties. It’s a perfect palette cleanser because the cake has a mild sweet flavor and it’s moist.

Ingredients:
370 grams brown sugar slabs (can sub with 340 grams or 2 cups packed light brown sugar)
4 cups (945ml) water, divided
390 grams tapioca flour (3 1/4 cups measured with the spoon-and-sweep method)
1 teaspoon kansui, optional
toasted sesame seeds
shredded unsweetened coconut
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Notes:
Light brown sugar tends to be sweeter than brown sugar slabs, which is why I recommend using 340 grams of it. Even if you use light brown sugar for the cake, make sure to dissolve the sugar in boiling water.

Some people asked if you can just pour all the batter into the pan at once and steam it. Yes, you can do that. But this defeats the purpose of the thousand layer cake, where you can see the small individual layers.

You can use any pan that holds 6 to 7 cups of liquid. Grease the pan and set it over the steaming rack.