Indonesian 'Lucky' Cake Bakers Busy Ahead of Chinese New Year

Jakarta Globe, Lenita Sulthani, February 09, 2010

Basket cakes ready for delivery. (JG Photo/Safir Makki)

For most people, Chinese New Year and the Muslim feast of Eid al Fitr have little in common except that they’re both determined by the phases of the moon.

But for Indonesian cook Umar Sanjaya, both celebrations are the busiest time of the year, when his signature “basket” cakes, made of sweetened, sticky, glutinous rice, are in high demand.

From their home west of the capital Jakarta, Sanjaya, 44, and his mother Lauw, 84, have been making the cakes for the past 50 years, using the same traditional technique and recipe.

With the Chinese Year of the Tiger set to start on Sunday, Sanjaya’s business is booming, with about 200 people working around the clock to fill orders from Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese, who traditionally use the cakes as offerings to the Kitchen God.

“We only produce basket cakes twice a year, every Eid al Fitr and Chinese New Year,” said Sanjaya, who makes more than 2,000 cakes a day in the lead-up to the Chinese lunar new year.

Business at the bakery took off in 2000, when then-president Abdurrahman Wahid scrapped a decree that banned ethnic Chinese from celebrating their new year in public.

Sanjaya only makes the round cakes to order, and receives orders from customers up to three months in advance.

The cakes, called nin gao or year cake in Chinese, are steamed in banana leaves, producing a sticky texture.

Teddy, a customer who has been buying basket cakes from the home bakery for the past 10 years, said the cakes were valued as good luck symbols and that Sanjaya’s simply tasted better.

“His cake is better than others, the others use machine to grind the sticky rice, here, they are pounded manually. That is why we can still eat the cake even after two months,” she said.

Making up only 3 percent of the population, but with a heavy influence over the economy, the ethnic Chinese have historically been resented by many in Indonesia, home to the world’s largest population of Muslims.

Reuters

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