Rainbow kuih lapis
Nine hand-steamed layers. Pandan, rose, gula melaka. Grandma’s 1968 recipe, unchanged.
A small bakery on Lebuh Armenian where Peranakan kuih meets sourdough & viennoiserie. Grandma’s recipes, Paris’s patience, Penang’s humidity.
Updated by hand at 7 am. When it’s gone, it’s gone — come back tomorrow.
Nine hand-steamed layers. Pandan, rose, gula melaka. Grandma’s 1968 recipe, unchanged.
72 hr cold ferment, French butter, pandan kaya folded in like chocolate.
Croissant dough laminated, proofed in muffin tin, filled with palm-sugar custard.
Pandan crepe wrapped around grated coconut cooked slow in gula melaka.
Whole-wheat starter, 24 hr bulk, baked dark. One slice changes a Penang breakfast.
Shortcrust shell, gula melaka molten centre, toasted coconut crown. Eat with a fork.
Butterfly-pea milk bread, soft as a cloud, faintly indigo. Slice for kaya toast.
Caramelised viennoiserie, kaya brushed in the final fold. Best within an hour.
Glutinous rice base, pandan custard set on top. We cut it square, not diamond.
Bunga telang glutinous rice with house kaya. A Peranakan tea-time staple.
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.
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 bakedMama 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 sugarNot 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 entryWe hold orders for fifteen minutes past your slot. Walk-ins after that. Pickup at the side counter on Lebuh Armenian.