New Year Cakes for Indonesian Chinese 

2010-02-08 10:35

 

This is a very busy time for Jakarta-based cake shop owner Umar Sanjaya. He's working day and night to produce a special pastry in time for Chinese New Year celebrations.

Helping him are more than 200 people who have been working tirelessly since the first week of January.

The cakes, made from glutinous rice and sugar syrup, are steamed in banana leaves and have an elastic and sticky texture.

Once used as an offering to a kitchen god, people now give the cakes as gifts to relatives, friends and colleagues.

[Umar Sanjaya, Cake Business Owner]:
"We only produce basket cakes twice a year, every Eid al Fitr and Chinese New Year."

His business produces 2,000 cakes a day. To ensure quality, he uses the same techniques and procedures used by his mother when she started the business 50 years ago.

Sanjaya says he only makes cakes based on orders and calls the customers when their cakes are ready for pick up. He said he has no stock for walk in customers.

[Umar Sanjaya, Cake Business Owner]:
"Since the government declared the Chinese New Year as a national holiday, demand for basket cakes increased by 50 percent."

Some have been buying basket cakes from Sanjaya for 10 years.

[Mrs. Teddy, Customer]:
"His cake is better than others, the others use machines to grind the sticky rice, here, they pounded manually. That is why we can still eat the cake even after two months."

Mrs. Teddy said the cakes are a symbolic wish for a better future.

Ethnic Chinese represent only three percent of Indonesia's 220 million people.