Mooncakes are to the Mid-Autumn Festival, and rice dumplings are to the Dragon Boat Festival. As if in memory, during special festivals, there will always be corresponding food on the table, creating layers of delicious memories for everyone. In Malaysia, the delicious food used to celebrate the end of Ramadan is the colorful kek lapis Sarawak.
Lapis means layer in Malay, and Sarawak means Sarawak. The two words together are Sarawak Thousand Layer Cake. The predecessor of Sarawak Thousand Layer Cake is Indonesian Thousand Layer Cake. After it was introduced to Malaysia from Indonesia in the 1970s, Malaysia added various complex designs to the Thousand Layer Cake and gradually developed its own version. Originally, Sarawak Thousand Crepe Cake was made to celebrate special festivals, but because it is so popular, it can now be seen all year round, and it has become the best weapon for pastry chefs to show off their skills.
Making Sarawak Thousand Crepe Cake is very laborious. The baker needs to bake the batter on a square pan first, then add a thin layer of color every ten minutes, and then cut it according to the sketch designed by the baker. , use condensed milk or jam as a binder to reorganize it, and finally wrap it up with dough. The work is very complicated. It may take up to eight hours to complete a Sarawak Thousand Crepe Cake, but after it is completed, each cross-section looks like a kaleidoscope. It’s always varied and you won’t get tired of watching it several times.
Baker Jennifer Chen first tried Sarawak mille-feuille in 1980, when a friend lost her mother’s recipe and asked him to make it. After countless experiments and more than ten years of accumulated experience, Jennifer has now successfully established a baking business, Kitchen Confidante. Making Sarawak Thousand Crepe Cake has long been a skill for Jennifer, but he also admits that for a For beginners, it’s not that quick to get started.
After Jennifer retired in 2003, his daughter Karen Chai took over his baking business. Karen continued her mother’s passion for Sarawak mille-feuille cakes, coupled with her background in science and engineering, and her studies at Le Cordon, a well-known baking school in Paris. Bleu’s solid training continues to improve the taste and design of Sarawak Thousand-Feuille Cake.
