MnYfoodtalk

Indonesia Layer Cake with Prune Recipe

You will never understand my feeling, the feeling of excitement and satisfactory once I had successfully baked this cake. Indonesia layer cake is my favorite cake since I was young, same to my family. We used to order this cake from my father's friend, who married a Medan wife and make a very nice layer cake. Year after year, the price getting more and more expensive but we still buy from them especially during Chinese New Year. I made this few years ago and ended up with throw everything into dustbin due to the super "compress" and oily layer. Waste lot of eggs, ingredients, $$ and many hours of baking time. If you never hear of this cake, let me briefly explain about it. It is an Indonesia cake, also called kuih lapis legit, bake layer by layer for roughly 5-7 minutes per layer. You will need at least 2-3 hours standing in front of oven through out the baking process. The top of each layer is bake until brown, repeatedly until last layer. After cutting it, you will see a very beautiful dark and light brown layer stacking together. The dark brown "lines" is the top layer of every single layer. To make this cake, you will need many egg yolks and not so many egg whites, so people claimed it as "high colesterol" cake. A kind of spice, which contribute the most to the taste is one of the main ingredient, I used mixed spice here. Don't eat the cake immediately after baked as it taste nicer the next day. You can add brandy or rum to the recipe to have even more tastier layer cake, and it can keep longer with alchohol. I decided to bake this again after saw many bakers baked this cake. Learn some techniques and precaution steps from here and there. This blogger provide a very good info and tips on this cake http://sweetsamsations.com/2013/01/03/lapis-legit/ I follow Agnes Chang's recipe. She has one VCD that shows how to make layer cake. I bought it few years ago and play it again before I make this cake. I modified the ingredients a little bit to suit my taste... Ingredients: Golden churn tinned butter suitable for making layer cake Do not use this type of butter to make layer cake as it will melted easily especially in hot weather 340g tinner butter180g icing sugar (sifted)1tbsp sweet condensed milk 12 egg yolk1/2tsp vanilla essense 100g plain flour (sifted together with mixed spice)1.5tsp mixed spice 4 egg white Method: 1. Cream butter and icing sugar with mixer (using k-beater) at medium speed until fluffy. Add in sweet condensed milk and continue cream until well combined. 2. In separate bowl, beat egg yolks and vanilla essense with handwhisk until pale. 3. Continue mixer at medium speed (step 1), slowly pour egg yolks into butter mixture and cream until well combined. 4. Switch mixer to low speed, add in sifted flour and mixed spice, beat until well combined.5. In separate big bowl, beat egg white until very hard. 6. Scoop 3~5 tbsp of mixture (4) into beaten egg white, stir with spoon until combined. 7. Add (6) into remaining (4) mixture and mix at low speed until well combined. The final mixture should look like this. To bake:1. Preheat oven at 200C (TOP & BOTTOM fire).2. Line square cake tin bottom layer with baking paper. Oil the paper to hold it well with cake tin.3. Pour one cup of mixture into cake tin, make the layer even with spatula. 4. Bake at oven until top layer is brown. (about 6~8 minutes depend on oven)5. when done for first layer, take out from oven, switch oven to TOP fire only. Poke cake's bubble with toothpick (if any).6. Pour another cup of mixture to make second layer.7. Repeat step (3) ~ (4) until second last layer, switch oven to TOP & BOTTOM fire, 180C.8. Continue to bake last layer until brown.9. Remove cake from oven and cool it at wire rack. *Note: Cut prune into half, make prune flat with finger / spoon, arrange it at 3rd & 6th layer (or 3rd and last layer). Arrange and press lightly after pour 3rd and 6th layer mixture. *Adjust your oven temperature base on your own oven. Lesson learnt here:1. I should bake each layer until darker brown, I bake it until light brown only.2. I should bake my cake at oven's upper level. For first few layers, I put at middle level, it take longer time to turn brown, you will get a dry cake if bake for too long, some part are not cooked well too.3. I should place baking paper at bottom cake tin only. This time I place baking paper at bottom and side, the paper flip down and covered the cake side and caused my cake not cooked enough (it blocked oven heat).4. Brush every two layers with little melted butter after baked. I brush every layer with melted butter this time and turn out more oily than expected. If brush every two layers will prevent too oily and at the same time, prevent dryness to the cake due to long hour baking.5. Egg white should be beaten at last stage. I follow Agnes's way and whisk egg white at the beginning. By the time I want to use it, it already turned watery. If whisk egg white after complete egg yolk portion, we can directly fold egg white into egg yolk after whisk egg white.6. Less sugar! I will reduce sugar to 180g as 200g is a bit too sweet for us. I learn a lot from this round and hopefully I can bake a nicer one next time. Although many mistake at this time, but the cake turn out very delicious too. Hence I believed if I can handle every single step well, it will be perfect! Stay tune for my next Indonesia Layer Cake with hawflakes. Before ending this post, I would like to wish all mothers a very Happy Mother's Day. And to my mom, Happy Mother's Day, I love you mummy...  this layer cake is specially dedicated for you!