Sunday, October 16, 2011

Kek lapis Sarawak

There was a Malaysian Street Festival today at the Queen Victoria Market which I went to check out despite the rain. Luckily the sun came out not long after we got there but that wouldn't have stopped us from lining up at the various stalls selling Malaysian goodness.

After checking out the talent, we decided to start with some fruit rojak and a teh peng (iced teh tarik/tea) which came in a plastic bag with string from Chilli Padi. Oh how it reminded me of being in Malaysia!


Next, I lined up to buy mee rebus from a really busy stall whilst M went next door for satays, both run by the same group. After finally getting our mee rebus,I walked up to M who was almost near the front of the queue but to my despair, the stall declared that they were so busy, the wait for satays was over an hour. I guess good satay, well satays in generally, is hard to come by in Melbourne as not a lot of people can do it well and in the traditional way over charcoal.

We walked past a stall selling little packs of cakes called Kek Lapis Sarawak which is actually what I wanted to blog about. These colourful little slabs of cake are made up of layers upon layers of cake, each baked one layer at a time and tinted different colours to create a pattern. I know that to make of these require plenty of time and patience and it's defnitely something I'd love to try to make one day.

There were cakes with different patterns, made up of various flavours including coffee, strawberry, honey and masam manis (which I think is the fruit Haw Flakes are made of). They are very similar to the Indonesian layer cake, Lapis Legit.

Honey kek lapis Sarawak
The honey kek cut up
Masam manis kek lapis

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Spring time is here!

Yay!! Spring is finally here. It's also wedding season and I've had a few requests for wedding cakes already.

I've also been busy shopping online. After um-ing and ah-ing as to what knives I should get to replace my crappy random knives I'm using now, I settled with buying some Global knives. Hopefully my fingers don't get slashed up too often while I used to the sharp blades. I also ordered the Miette book because the cover and scalloped pages was too hard to pass up, and Everyday Harumi. Without really knowing anything about Harumi Kurihara, I ordered her book to find out that she is like the Martha Stewart of Japan and is really really famous. Time to start trialling her recipes!




Although I've been quiet lately, I have made a couple of cakes since the last time I'd posted. I was asked to make a baby shower cake, a turtle cake for a 31 year old and her sister and a wedding cake. Here are some photos for your viewing pleasure.

Baby shower cake - raspberry chocolate mud inside

Terry the turtle....cake

 
Roses and blossoms (my favourite photo taken from my phone)