George Town · Penang · Baked daily

Threegenerationsof layers.

A small bakery on Lebuh Armenian where Peranakan kuih meets sourdough & viennoiserie. Grandma’s recipes, Paris’s patience, Penang’s humidity.

Hours
7 am – sold out
Closed
Mondays
Address
112 Lebuh Armenian
Since
1968
Vol. 28 · Today

What’s in the case
this morning.

Updated by hand at 7 am. When it’s gone, it’s gone — come back tomorrow.

Three recipes

From grandma’s
blue notebook.

She wrote in pencil, in Hokkien, with measurements like “a small bowl” and “until it smells right.” Three of them found their way into our case this week.

N° 01

Rainbow kuih lapis

From Mak · circa 1968

Nine layers, steamed one at a time, eight minutes each. Mak said you cannot rush colour. The pink came from beetroot when rose was scarce; the green is always pandan, never extract. We still peel ours by hand — layer by layer — before the first cup of kopi.

— steamed, never baked
N° 02

Kuih dadar

From Mama · circa 2003

Mama taught us the crepe should be the thickness of an old letter. The coconut filling cooks slow in gula melaka until it crackles and smells of caramel and rain. Roll while warm, plate with the seam tucked under, like she folded our school uniforms.

— pandan crepe, palm sugar
N° 03

Gula melaka cruffin

From Yi · learned in Paris, 2024

Not in the notebook — not yet. Croissant dough laminated to twenty-seven layers, proofed in a muffin tin, then we pipe in palm-sugar custard the moment it leaves the oven. Mak would have called it foreign. Mama tried one and asked for a second.

— the new entry
Our story

A bakery told
in three women.

1968Mak
Mak opened a kuih stall on Lebuh Armenian when George Town was still all five-foot-ways and bicycle bells. She steamed kuih lapis in an enamel pot at four in the morning, sold them by ten, and was home before the sun got cruel. The shop sign was a piece of cardboard. The recipes lived in a blue exercise book she kept under the till.
2003Mama
Mama took over the year the heritage zone was inscribed. She kept the blue notebook, kept the enamel pot, but added a small oven at the back — the first one we ever owned — for tarts and kaya cakes. People came from Butterworth on Sundays. She refused to franchise. “If I can't taste it,” she said, “I won't sell it.”
2026Yi
Yi — the granddaughter, the one who left for Paris and came home — runs Lapis today. The blue notebook is still under the till, plus a sourdough starter, a French butter supplier, and a 72-hour cold-ferment fridge. The kuih lapis is unchanged. Everything else is a conversation between three generations and one small kitchen in Penang.
Order ahead

Reserve a box,
pick a slot.

We hold orders for fifteen minutes past your slot. Walk-ins after that. Pickup at the side counter on Lebuh Armenian.