It’s been a little past a week since I got home. Several cakes and many macarons later, I found myself staring at 20 egg yolks in my refrigerator. With no ice cream maker, absolutely no desire to make crème brûlée and the Lunar New Year just round the corner, I settled on the most logical solution: kueh lapis.

Kueh (possible spelling variation: kuih, kway, kue) Lapis, also known as ‘kek lapis’, ‘kueh lapis legit’, ’spek koek’, ’spekkuk’, is a traditional Indonesian layered spice cake, baked with an insanely unhealthful amount of butter and egg yolks.

The heading on my mum’s recipe said “Kway Lapis Spekkoek”. I was intrigued by the term ’spek koek’ and did a little research. It turns out that ’spek koek’ stems from the days of the Dutch East India Company and Dutch colonization of Southeast Asia. In Dutch, ‘koek’ translates to cake and ’spek’ translates to lard or bacon. It is conceivable that the term ’spek’ refers to the cake layers, which resemble the layers in pork belly. But perhaps ’spek’ refers to lard as an ingredient. This leads to another question: Was ’spek koek’ brought by colonists to the Dutch East Indies or was ‘kueh lapis legit’ an indigenous sweet given a fancy Dutch name?

To make things even more interesting, kueh lapis is similar in concept to the German Baumkuchen (literally translated as “tree cake”), so named because the cake was traditionally made on a rotating spit and the cake’s cross section resembled the age-rings in trees. These days, the cake is more commonly made in a ring pan. The last paragraph in this Jarkarta Post article has a really interesting take on the origins of kueh lapis and even manages to link it with Baumkuchen. I’m not entirely sure if there aren’t several leaps of faith in the theory, but it is nonetheless a fascinating read.

Whether Dutch, Hungarian, German or Indonesian in origin, baking kueh lapis is an extremely time-consuming task - each layer of cake batter is spread thinly onto the previous layers and baked for several minutes. Being a slow worker in the kitchen and it being my first attempt meant that I spent several hours (with my mum) baking this particular cake. I’m relieved the cake turned out well, but I’m not sure if I’ll be baking it again anytime soon!

[Edited to include recipe, Feb 17, 2008]

Kueh Lapis Spekkoek

Ingredients
20 egg yolks
4 egg whites
500g salted butter
3 tbsp condensed milk
340g sugar
200g plain flour
2 tsp ground mixed spices
2 tsp vanilla essence
3 tbsp rum or brandy
90g pitted prunes, sliced into thin strips (optional)

Method
1. Butter the base of an 8″ X 8″ X 2.5″ pan and line with baking parchment.
2. Pre-heat your oven, selecting the grill function.
3. Sift the plain flour and mixed spices together.
4. Beat the egg yolks and sugar together until pale yellow, thick and creamy
5. Cream the butter and condensed milk together until soft and fluffy. Add the creamed butter to the egg yolk mixture and mix until combined.
6. Beat the egg whites until medium firm peaks.
7. Fold in the egg whites, followed by the flour mixture into the rest of the batter.
8. Stir in the vanilla essence and rum until well-combined.
9. Spread a thin layer of batter onto the parchment paper.
10. Grill for 7 - 8 mins on the lowest rack in your oven or until lightly golden brown.
11. Remove cake pan from oven and press the baked layer down lightly with a metal fondant smoother. Prick all over the layer of cake with a toothpick.
12. Repeat steps 9 to 11 for each layer. (Optional: Add prunes on every second or third layer).
13. For the last layer, turn the oven down to 180 degrees C and bake on middle rung for 15 minutes or until golden brown.
14. Remove from oven and run a paring knife along the edges of the cake pan.
15. Turn the kueh lapis out of the pan and remove the baking parchment.
16. Flip cake back upright and let cool.

The thing about using fresh strawberries (or any fresh fruit for that matter) in cakes is that one is always at the mercy of the latest shipment that arrives from where ever it is that the local supermarkets or grocers at the wet market get their fruit.

The truth be told, I get just a little nervous whenever I receive orders for strawberry cakes because I never quite know what I’m going to find on the supermarket shelves. This is especially true in the period between the end of the US season and the beginning of the Australian / New Zealand season. There have been days when I almost cried tears of dismay at the awful state of the strawberries that were available - over-ripened ones that were already beginning to turn to mush, under-ripened ones that were 1/3 greenish white, monsterously huge ones and sad tiny ones (both kinds in the same punnet) - I’ve seen them all.

These days, I get my strawberies from the fruit stands at the local wet markets and they’ve been great so far. I believe it’s because the grocers are more fastidious when picking produce for their stalls. Now if only the supermarkets could afford the time to sort their produce…

The cheesecake pictured here is the 1st cheesecake order I’ve received. Many thanks to L for giving me room to experiment with a new recipe!

My client, C, had originally approached me about miniature sugar paste cakes. They were for a young lady celebrating her birthday at the Bukit Timah Saddle Club.

Since fondant, the humid weather and I don’t seem to agree with each other, I suggested a cake with a royal icing pony instead when C told me that a pony ride would be part of the day’s events.

I went ahead and designed a trial royal icing pony. I soon realised that it would not be an easy task getting the pony on to the cake without breaking it and the only thing I could think of was using fondant as a support as I’d done for the giraffe. I guess I couldn’t escape fondant after all!

As expected, the fondant was only semi-dry. Still, I think the chocolate cake turned out pretty cute. I only hope it survived long enough for the birthday girl to cut the cake!

A couple of weeks ago, I came across a really adorable royal icing giraffe in one of my mum’s old cake decorating books. I thought the idea was cute and that it’d be cool to make a long cake. Since my sister’s birthday was coming up, I had the perfect excuse!

The royal icing piping was a lot of fun and the giraffe was really cute, except for one major problem. I hadn’t thought of how I could remove the sugar art from the cellophane without breaking it. But just in case things didn’t work out, I made a little royal icing rooster as well, all the while hoping that the giraffe would stay intact. Sadly, the giraffe did break (into several pieces), but I thought I could still salvage it by assembling the pieces on a long piece of fondant.

Little did I realise that I’d just created another problem. The fondant stubbornly refused to dry, despite the hot weather. All it did was dry a little in the day, but turn into a soft mush in the evening. This I attributed to the awful humidity that we’ve been experiencing lately. In the end, I turned to air-conditioning for help. The fondant did dry somewhat, but only if I kept it in the air-conditioned room.

In the end, I managed to get sugar paste and royal icing on to the chocolate cake (sandwiched with raspberry jam and chocolate ganache), but this experience has further convinced me not to put fondant cakes up for sale. At least for now. As beautiful or adorable as the end results usually are, the drying process is just too annoying and is most definitely not worth running the air-conditioning for days on end.

* NOT FOR SALE *

Ladyfinger sponges, also known as Savoiardi, are a staple in my pantry. I love having these light and sweet sponges on hand, so I can whip up a tiramisu on short notice. But more importantly, I love how gorgeous they look on the side of a cake, large or small. Add on a satin ribbon and the cake takes on a regal look!

This birthday cake (made for a client’s friend) looks like a Charlotte Russe on the outside, but it’s really 3 layers of sponge cake, sandwiched with 2 layers of homemade strawberry compote and cream.

I wasn’t sure how to completely cover the top with strawberries as requested. Initially, I’d thought of placing whole strawberries with their bottoms up, but changed my mind when I realised that it would look terrible because the berries were of vastly different sizes.

I’m really glad I went with the sliced version on this cake. I’ll definitely be using this layout again. I only hope WL and her dinner guests were as pleased with the cake as I was!

I really wasn’t going to make more sugar paste cakes so soon, but the beautiful photos of sugar paste roses in Peggy Porschen’s Romantic Cakes were so inspiring that I couldn’t help myself.

Sadly, no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t tease the rose petals to take on the life-like frilly edges (no amount of rolling or pressing with the bone tool produced the desired result) and I finally settled for smaller blooms.

While the roses here are a far cry from the gorgeous ones in the book, I was so delighted with how the cakes turned out that I might just attempt a small 2-tiered cake next.

When I took a break from macarons last month, the plan was to use the spare time to experiment with the inspiring royal icing and sugar paste decorating ideas from Peggy Porschen’s beautiful book, Romantic Cakes. But procrastination got the upperhand and the month went by without any form of sugar crafting. It was only early this week that I finally went to the store and bought some sugar crafting supplies.

These miniature cakes are 3″ across and 2″ tall, made up of Victoria sponge sandwiched with raspberry jam and vanilla buttercream, covered with a thin layer of marzipan and another thin layer of white sugar paste.

The royal icing butterflies and sugar paste flowers were attached to the cakes with royal icing and the tiny royal icing green leaves piped on last.

The butterflies were made 4 days ahead of time and the roses 2 days in advance since these had to dry before they could be used.

The wet and humid weather we’ve been having here this week did not help the drying process at all. I’ve found that sugar paste dries fine with air-conditioning, but once it’s brought back to a non air-conditioned environment, the paste starts to absorb moisture and turn slightly soft again. I’m beginning to think that the humid climate here is not suitable for sugar crafting unless one works and keeps the end product in an air-conditioned space. (Update: The sugar paste has finally dried after 3 days.)

While the cake, buttercream and marzipan tasted really good, I don’t think I’ll be making sugar paste cakes on a regular basis. It seems such an awful waste to chuck away all the pretty decorations, which had been so painstakingly made, just to get to the cake beneath.

I’ve been busy with other non-baking/cooking related matters these last couple of weeks and haven’t been baking as much as I’d have liked. This particular order had been placed several weeks in advance and I was glad to have an excuse to fire up my oven. Since I’d made this particular cake only once prior to this, I thought it would be prudent to get some practice in first.

Both cakes here have 3 layers of sponge cake (instead of 4) and were sandwiched with strawberries and cream. The one above is the trial version.

I’d toyed with the idea of using non-dairy whipped cream since it’s supposed to hold up better in our warm climate, but decided against it once I’d read the ingredient list. Dairy cream might contain fat, not give as smooth a finish and be difficult to pipe, but at least it doesn’t contain a whole list of chemicals whose names I can barely pronounce.

Available for Purchase: 9-inch French Strawberry Cake @ a Price of S$50. Variation with Ladyfinger Sponges around the Cake @ S$55.

I’ve finally gotten round to assembling the mango mousse cake that I’d planned to make a couple of weeks ago. I think I’ve just managed to catch the tail end of the mango season.

This cake is made up of alternating layers of springy sponge cake and mango mousse, topped with a layer of mango jelly, which I made using fresh mango puree and a dash of lemon juice to prevent the deep orange colour from turning brown.

For the sponge cake, I used a recipe from my mum’s cake recipe collection. The recipe makes a very “spongey” and soft cake. I’ll definitely be using it as a base for all my sponge cake recipes in the future.

For the mousse and jelly, I adapted Jo’s mango mousse / mango mirror recipes listed in Imperial Kitchen (a local food forum), using gelatine leaves instead of gelatine powder and adjusting the amount of whipped cream in the mousse. It was my first time using gelatine leaves and I got a little worried when the jelly showed no sign of thickening after I’d added the gelatine. In my overzealousness, I think I may have added one leaf too many, resulting in a jelly layer that was a little less sweet than I’d have liked.

Still, I loved the overall look, texture, taste and aroma of this cake. I especially liked the fact that the cake is entirely covered with mousse, without any unsightly layering on the sides. Thanks Jo for sharing your recipes!

Although I really like chiffon cakes, I’d always been told that it was really difficult to get the right texture. After seeing HL’s beautifully fluffy chiffon cake, I couldn’t help but be inspired to give this pale green cake a shot myself. My mum had recently loaned me her precious collection of cake recipes, complete with neat handwritten notes and instructions on each page. I flipped through the thick binder, hoping that there’d be one for pandan chiffon cake.

As luck would have it, I found not one, but four different recipes and selected the one with the most notes penciled on it. After all, I’d never made a pandan chiffon cake before and would need all the extra help I could get.

My mum’s recipe called for thick coconut milk and pandan “juice”. Although I could probably have used commercially packed coconut milk and pandan essence, I opted to use fresh ingredients instead. This meant extracting coconut milk from freshly grated coconut and extracting the deep green liquid from fresh pandan leaves. Having done neither of these two things before, I was glad that everything went without a glitch. I suspect hanging around the kitchen as a child and watching my mum perform these tasks umpteen times played a big part in my own “success” here.

Other than being a little surprised that the huge cake slid out of the pan so smoothly (albeit without most of its brown “skin”), I was delighted with my first attempt. The cake was pillowy soft, fluffy and wonderfully fragrant. I would love to bake this cake again sometime soon - if only it didn’t contain sinfully rich coconut milk and such a large number of eggs.