Bandros, haha, for old times' sake. Too nostalgic to be turned down.

Bandros, haha, for old times' sake. Too nostalgic to be turned down.

My old friend once told me 20 years ago - and it tingles my curiosity, there are lots of variants of a particular traditional cake that spreaded throughout mainland Java, some called it Bandros, the others called it Pancung or Pancong; either of the names were used as general name of the aforementioned cake in Bandung (the city that I've been living in since 1972). I spent my adulthood tasting this delicate cuisine.

Back then, Bandros' main ingredient basically consisted of rice flour; but over 3 decades later, it took a gradual modernization of recipe while still earning decent popularity through its particular and classic shape; people now prefer to utilize a mixture of wheat flour and rice flour, or solely based on wheat flour. This is based on the general opinion about the taste of classic recipe, which is sometimes ain't no softer than the newer recipe. The utilization of wheat flour makes this recipe more delicate in texture and commercial. Well then, the recipe would be...

The Recipe :

Yield : 44 portions (@ 12-15 gr)

NO	QUANTITY	UNITS	INGREDIENTS	REMARKS
1.	100	gr	Wheat Flour (Soft)
2.	50	gr	Rice Flour
3.	150	gr	Unripe Coconut (Shredded)
4.	a little	-	Salt
5.	450	ml	Coconut Milk	amount based on 450 gr of shredded coconut
6.	50	gr	Sugar	optional - sprinkled over
7.	a little	-	Cooking Oil	greasing the tin

Methods regarding the recipe :

· Preheat the bandros tin until 180 degrees, but before you started to preheat it, grease the tin with cooking oil.

· Mix all the ingredients, whisk it together until well-combined.

· Pour it to the bandros tin, cover the tin to prevent the steams coming out, wait until the crust show its color, usually it would be golden brown.

· Put out the bandros on a plate, sprinkle it with sugar, then serve it while still hot.

What I like the most from this cake - or mini cake, back then it became a symbol of Indonesians' simplicity and originalities of their cuisine - yet it turned out that most of Indonesian cuisines is not so simple as I thought before.