International Cooking: Kue Lapis
Photo Taken By Gianna Beltramo
By Gianna Beltramo
Kue lapis is an Indonesian steamed layer cake, which it is also prepared in other Southeast Asian countries under various names. Unlike its baked form, kue lapis legit, the steamed version has a sticky, jelly-like texture and its numerous thin layers are often colorful as opposed to lapis legit’s more “natural” shades. The dish has its roots in 19th-century Dutch colonialism, with kue lapis legit being known as Spekkoek in the Netherlands (“spek” meaning bacon, and “koek” meaning cake, in reference to its brown-and-tan striped appearance). Kue lapis and kue lapis legit translate literally to “layer cake” and “sweet layer cake” respectively, though my mid-summer dabbling into the language of Indonesia is only enough to recognize the word “kue.” The faintly-sweet layers are peeled apart and eaten one at a time, made possible by the unique texture. Kue lapis is sold in shops and bakeries throughout the country, though it is also quite simple to prepare at home.
My cooking experience began with the mental gymnastics of trying to figure out how many tablespoons is equivalent to 0.268 cups—4.288, by the way—and other fun metric conversions. A split second after I’d poured the coconut milk, I realized that the measuring cup had a handy 300mL mark on the other side which would have proven much more efficient.
Still relatively unfazed by such measurements as “1 cup, 4 tablespoons, and ~1 teaspoon,” I added an amount of sugar that was nothing short of baffling, especially considering how not-sweet the final product is. Perhaps it says something about the world, that we are so used to heaps of sugar being a key component in every sort of food we eat that we don’t even taste it anymore. Or maybe I just don’t know how much sugar constitutes “a lot.” At any rate, the stirring-in of the tapioca starch created an unanticipated non-Newtonian fluid situation which required me to set aside my faithful plastic spoon in favor of the electric mixer. However, the resulting mixture of water, sugar, coconut milk, vanilla, and tapioca starch was a beige color that can only be described as “comforting.” (Something I seldom say about any shade of beige.) Both the starch and rice flour were extremely fine, and in closing the bags I caused quite the explosion.
The batter being mostly complete, I put more water than I thought I would need in the steamer I wasn’t sure we owned until 30 seconds before I started cooking, wrapped a towel around the lid (to prevent condensation dripping back onto the cake!), and turned the burner on high. Having never used a steamer before, I probably should have googled, or at least asked someone, how much water I was supposed to put in, but I guess I was more out of sorts than I thought I was: it didn’t so much as cross my mind to do either of those things.
For the entirety of the hour-and-a-half cooking time, I had no idea how much water was in the steamer, because all the holes were covered by the cake pan, but it wouldn’t have really changed much since I’m pretty sure I wasn’t doing it right anyway. There was also the age-old question of how high the burner was supposed to be, another very easily answered question that I didn’t even think to look up. Cooking activates my fight-or-flight response, it would seem, except I don’t fight or flee, I just run around silently screaming pretending everything is fine.
I’d read that red, white, and green were typical layer colors for kue lapis, though I’d seen a vast number of color combinations, which is a good thing considering the “red” food coloring turned out to be purple. Oops.
The cooking process was very stressful and hands-on, since I had to pour in a new layer every couple of minutes and was pretty much constantly stirring, measuring, or rinsing something. I was so focused on not trying to mess something up that I kept forgetting to take pictures, but naturally things managed to go wrong anyway. While the previous layers had all cooked in the amount of time dictated by the recipe, layer four was still too sticky. I let it cook for several minutes, to no avail. I added water! I turned up the burner! Eventually I just poured in the next layer, which was still pure liquid after ten minutes. In retrospect, I was definitely way too exhausted to be cooking, because for some reason I thought it would be a cool idea to add layer 6 despite layer 5 being little more than colorful lukewarm milk water. So...they mixed together. As liquid does. However, I sorted things out with an award-worthy amount of improvisation which really only amounted to me sitting in the kitchen and waiting for it to solidify while my mother gave me a worried look every couple of seconds. By the last layer (7, because that’s all I could fit in the pan), things were back to normal.
When I took it out of the pan, it was incredibly sticky—so much so that the side got stuck to the plate I was trying to put it on and I had to rip off a chunk to get it to unstick—but a night in the refrigerator helped that. The layers also became much more vibrant and distinguishable, and while it’s certainly not perfect as any of the images on the internet, it’s a passable first attempt.
When you first bite into it, it doesn’t taste like much; the first noticeable thing is the texture, which is similar to Jello from an alternate dimension. The “cake” part is more noticeable in the later layers, when bits of flour and starch have started to settle at the bottom of the mixing bowl. After a couple of seconds, the vanilla flavor becomes more apparent, though it is still quite subtle compared to the more typical baked vanilla cakes most of us are familiar with. There is also a hint of something else that might be the coconut milk, though that could just be because I knew there was coconut milk in the recipe and was therefore that flavor. Ambiguously-psychosomatic coconut. The sugar, as I mentioned previously, was extremely subtle.
It is stretchy without being chewy; many recipes I read recommended peeling back the layers and eating them one by one, which I was able to do without breaking any layers even though they were a bit hard to separate due to how very sticky they were. I tried cutting it into a “cake” slice and into strips which made it look like colorful rainbow cake bacon, and the bacon style was definitely the superior of the two. It was much easier to peel and a lot of fun to do so.
Was it stressful? Yes. Was eating it fun? Yes. Did it take forever? It depends on one’s definition of “forever,” but for me that’s anywhere longer than an hour and a half, so: yes. I liked the texture a lot, and the layers were gorgeous, but I prefer my desserts with more flavor. I probably wouldn’t do it again, but it was an interesting way to spend an evening at home.
