Economical Lapis Surabaya (Less Eggs)

Lapis surabaya (Spiku) is an Indonesian origin delicious cake mostly popular during festive season, especially Chinese New Year, besides thousand layers cake (lapis legit). It's basically a 3 layered sponge cake with filling of your choice, either cream or jam. Aside from that, this cake is commonly used as cake base for decorated wedding or birthday cake, too
This cake is infamous for the use of high number of egg yolks, talking about cholesterol, my friends! :)
I usually make this yummy, soft, rich and moist cake only around Chinese New Year time, I think it's alright to indulge once a year, isn't it :)
My two favourite lapis surabaya recipes I always use can be viewed HERE and HERE
Both use 30 egg yolks in 1 recipe, giving me headache each time on what to do with the egg whites, especially when I have quite a number of friends ordering this cake, I think I can soak myself in the egg whites after that LOL

Now, this version of lapis Surabaya cake has been around for quite some time among Indonesian bakers. It's the economical version of the cake where less eggs are used, only 10 eggs to be exact, 1/3 of the original version
It's basically a 3 layered sponge cake with filling of your choice, either cream or jam
Taste wise, it's light, airy, soft and fluffy. Sweetness is just nice to my liking. Yum!
While the original version of lapis Surabaya gives a soft, rich and super moist cake, the economical version is light, airy, soft and fluffy, not as moist but it's not dry either, perfect. Sweetness is just nice to my liking. Yum!

I have 2 recipes I'd like to try and this is the first one, and I'm very happy with the result :)

In terms of being soft and fluffy, this cake gets 5 stars! It's so soft that I had to be extra careful when inverting and transferring it to the cooling rack. However I still got some dents on some parts. See the first picture below, there is a few dents at the top of the cake

 

 

 

What disturbed me a little was both recipes use emulsifier. Somehow I don't really fancy putting it in my bakes. After doing some googling and reading, I learnt that it can be substituted with letichin, and natural letichin can be found in egg yolks, and/or condensed milk, yoghurt or mayonnaise

So I just went with my gut, omitted the emulsifier and added plain low fat yoghurt in the batter. And hurray, I still got a really nice cake :)

 

Another thing was, the butter this recipe used. It uses 3 types of butter - Hollman butter, room butter and margarine

I never see Hollman butter here in Singapore, nor using it. Btw it looks like this:

 

Source: rossybakerysupplier

 

Room butter, that's how Indonesians call it, is actually Dutch butter, creamier type of butter. I think I saw this butter before in Singapore, but I never use it in any of my bake. This is how it looks like:

 

Source: wisjman-butter.nl

 

Well, to simplify everything, I just used SCS butter to make this cake :)

 

 

Here's the recipe...

 

Original recipe is from a famous chef in Indonesia named Yongki Gunawan. I saw his recipe HERE

 

What you need:

 

10 egg yolks

5 egg whites

10g emulsifier (I omitted)

150g caster sugar

100g plain flour

1 tbsp full cream milk powder

1 tbsp corn flour

50g Hollman butter

50g room butter

50g margarine

(to replace the 3 butters, I used 150g SCS salted butter)

1 tbsp sweet condensed milk

1 tbsp plain low fat yoghurt

1 tbsp chocolate paste

 

Method:

1. Preheat oven at 175degC. Grease and line 3pcs of  22x10x4cm pans (or you can use lapis surabay cake pan like what I did to save the trouble)
2. Melt butter in microwave, add in condensed milk and mix well
3. In a bowl, beat in high speed eggs and sugar til thick, fluffy and expand triple the size
4. Lower the speed and add in yoghurt, sifted both flours and milk powder
5. Add in about 1/4 of the batter to the melted butter and mix well
6. Pour in the mixture into the remaining batter and fold in gently
7. Take 1/3 of the batter and mix in chocolate paste
8. Pour the chocolate batter in 1 of the pan while dividing the yellow batter in 2 pans evenly
9. Tap all the pans gently before putting in the oven to release the trapped air bubbles
10. Bake for 20-25mins or til skewer test comes out clean
11. Remove from oven immediately invert to cooling rack. Invert back 1 of the yellow cake (this is for the top layer). Let cool
12. Spread jam on the inverted yellow cake, top with chocolate cake, and spread jam on it, top with the yellow cake meant for the top part of this layered cake
13. Ready to cut and serve. Keep in the airtight container

 

I will try the other recipe of this economical version of the cake, and do some comparison

Having tried the economical version, it will not stop me baking the cholesterol laden version, cos even though both are nice, but one can't replace the other, it's just different, even though they look the same. So yes, I will still make the 30 yolks cake for this coming Chinese New Year :)



This post is linked to "My Treasured Recipes #5 - Chinese New Year Goodies (Jan/Feb 2015)" hosted by Miss B of Everybody Eats Well in Flanders and co-hosted by Charmaine of Mimi Bakery House