Kai tung gho (Steamed egg cake or 鸡蛋糕)

I've previously tried this kai tung gho recipe in the past because I didn't want to use soda water or 7Up or Sprite. However, the cake always ended up being really heavy and worse, took 1 hour to steam. The cake becomes even harder the next day after it's been in the fridge overnight.

I've had to re-evaluate this idea and concluded from various recipes that the secret to success is:
1) wrapping the lid with a cloth so that the steam doesn't condense and drip onto the cake,
2) need to use old school soda water instead of baking power
3) hand whisking is better than machine whisking for a more consistent texture and
4) using cake flour rather than regular flour. Sifting is then optional.

I've since found alternative recipes:

1) Little Teochew: quoted by quite a few other food bloggers and uses an interesting method of folding in the cake flour, alternating with the soda water. Recipe uses cake flour.
2) Bits of taste: More ang mo-fied recipe. Uses cake flour and baking powder, and interestingly, adds milk. From the picture, I imagine the texture will end up being closer to that of a Japanese cheesecake?
3)  Empower network: Recipe uses normal flour but no baking powder. Uses lots of eggs and old school soda. However, the texture of the cake in the picture looks just as heavy as mine. Also takes 45 mins to 1 hour to steam, so outcome isn't going to be very different from the original recipe I used.

Would like to try them out some day! Watch this space!

Update: New comparison post in 2020