Crispy Cookies: Indonesia

By Barrie | August 2nd, 2007 | No Comments

Some people say the Indonesian sweet tooth was noted as early as the period of the mighty kingdom of Majapahit in the 13th century. People back then even called the national flag gula kelapa, meaning sugar and coconut: white for the coconut flesh and red for the reddish-brown palm sugar.

Sweet crispy cookies were mostly made from the plants of the native environment and named kue, kue kering or kue-kue. In Javanese it is kuwih. The sweets were made from ingredients such as rice, rice flour, glutinous rice flour, cassava, sweet potatoes and sago.

In time the kue-kue kering adopted foreign overtones and acquired the English name “cookies” or the Dutch koekjes. Many kue kering got also a foreign name like kaasstengels or zoutebollen (Dutch) or semprit from the Dutch spritsjes.

In many cases, however, the original name stayed but the taste changed. Like the kue kering of Chinese origin called nok pia in Cantonese. (Nok means ox and pia is kue). Nokpia became one the most popular kue on the southern coast of Java near the town of Purwokerto.

Nokpia is also often called kue bohong or the “lying cookie” because while it is rather large, the inside is mostly empty! Kue bohong is supposed to have a minced meat filling, but sometimes it is only filled with a bit of palm sugar. Kue bohong or nokpia has remained a popular snack through the years.

Another sweet cookie called kue Bagelen is actually not a cookie as such but a slice of sweet roll. Yesterday’s rolls are greased with margarine or butter and strewn abundantly with granulated or powdered sugar. Then they are baked in the oven over medium heat until crisp. Roti Bagelen, sometimes packed in large 40 centimeter tins, is a favorite cookie during Idul Fitri.

The story goes that housewives from the region of Bagelen in the south of Java did not like day-old bread and made several other bread dishes out of it, like poding roti which is bread pudding baked with slices of young green coconut. The most popular, though, is the roti Bagelen.

Today, the roti Bagelen is not just a slice of day old bread. It has climbed up the ladder of more sophisticated snacks like kaasstengels or almond cookies, packed accordingly in expensive paper-lined transparent boxes to give at Idul Fitri. Roti Bagelen has also changed into a mini-slice form.

A kue kering that has not changed its appearance is the kue kuping gajah, meaning a cookie shaped like elephant ears. It was my favorite when I was a teen, because nobody said “don’t take so many”. The kue kuping gajah was a cookie for everybody at any time.

Another evergreen cookie is the semprit. The cookie of Dutch overtones was originally named sprits, meaning to sprout. The cookie is made with a special appliance named koeksprits or koekspuit.

Various syringes with a small hole in center can be used instead of the main appliance to “sprout” different shapes. Such appliances are available even in small traditional markets.

Suryatini N. Ganie