The odyssey of 'kue lapis'

Suryatini N. Ganie, Contributor/Jakarta

With only a week before the holy month of Ramadhan ends, households are busy preparing food and sweets for the Idul Fitri celebration, the special time when families feast after a month of diligent fasting.

Relatives and friends drop by to celebrate the happy occasion together and to ask each other's forgiveness for any past wrongdoing. Of course, a big part of the celebration is eating to one's heart's content.

The food served is mostly traditional fare, according to the family's ethnic origins. In my family, it will be a mix of Acehnese and northern Javanese dishes.

Amid the groaning buffet of sweets, cakes of foreign origin are accepted into the array of traditional ones, like tapai uli, black fermented glutinous rice eaten with slices of white steamed glutinous rice.

A cake that will always be present -- whether from an expensive bakery or simply a homemade one -- is kue lapis legit, the very rich and spicy layer cake.

The super deluxe kue lapis legit, costing several hundred rupiah, on the tables of rich urban families will be presented in elegantly thin slices. But thicker slices of kue lapis legit will also be served at simpler homes, bought from a cake shop in traditional markets or from supermarkets.

The story of kue lapis legit goes way back before it settled down at Idul Fitri tables as a must-have treat.

Initially, it came here with the Dutch around the end of the 19th century, who brought with them cakes and other sweet fare from their homeland in fear of not being able to purchase them here.

Spekkoek -- literally "bacon cake" -- was actually not a Dutch original. The cake was brought to the Netherlands by the Germans, who in turn adapted the recipe from the Hungarians. The Hungarians had taught German bakers the making of a layer cake called dobosch torte, which was a favorite among the Hungarian upper class.

The Germans renamed the cake Baumkuchen since the layers were horizontally made on a special revolving tool, thus resembling the stem of a tree.

Spekkoek went down a treat in this tropical land. However, its Dutch name did not sit well with some in this predominantly Muslim country, and kue lapis (lapis meaning layer), with the addition of legit, meaning sweet and aromatic, was preferred.

There are careful rules on how many layers a first-class cake must have.

"At least 12," said a woman who herself makes quality kue lapis legit for her friends.

But that rule was broken, for the better, about 50 years ago, when a baker in Surabaya, who was perhaps short of time, made a "personalized" kue lapis legit. It consisted of only three robust sponge layers -- yellow, chocolate and then yellow again. It became very popular in its own right and was named kue lapis Surabaya.

In the course of time, the cakes, like our country's political scene, has undergone "reform". The creativity of many dedicated bakers of the younger generation resulted in several varieties of kue lapis made as a specialty of the house or the bakery, and available not only on Idul Fitri.

For instance, the practice of decorating it with dried or conserved fruit from Europe began about 30 years ago, in order to raise the price.

There is also the famous kue lapis Mandarin from Surakarta and the attractive looking kue lapis selembut bayu (meaning "as soft as the morning breeze") that I tasted at a five-star establishment.

But for many of us, young or old, there is no substitute for our good old kue lapis legit at Idul Fitri, even if we welcome the more recent culinary invasions of other cakes -- like the German Schwarzwaelder Kirschtorte, Italian tiramisu and American cheesecake.

So when you serve a piece of kue lapis legit on Idul Fitri, think back on its own long journey from points around the world, before it became a traditional "Indonesian" cake.