BAKPIA, Special Cake From Pathuk
Category : Local Culinary

Traditional food is a symbol of certain culture. Javanese people have a lot of food came from their ancestor. Mostly, it's sweet enough because made of sugar. Jogjakarta, a small city in the mid of Java Island becoming very famous as a place where produce bakpia. Bakpia is meal made of green beans and flavors. The color is brown and white. There's no certain data about how it was came. But, mostly people believe its combination of Chinese and Javanese culture.

Jogjakarta has a certain area where famous as central of Bakpia Industry. We called it Pathuk. It's located behind a famous tourist area named Malioboro Street. At Pathuk, you can find many kinds taste of bakpia such as mung beans, cheese, chocolate, and black kumbu.

As a tourist you can see the bakpia making process. Bakpia was cook used the traditional way. But now, it's changing. Modern technology is becoming a part of the process. Bakpia making process starting with boiled the mug beans cooked the kumbu (the mixture of red sugar with mung beans, cheese or with chocolate) by using the woods on little fire and baked used charcoals. But, it's changed with roaster, huller, and etc.

Perhaps, no one knows about bakpia story behind. Bakpia adopted from Chinese food such as bakwan, bakso (meatball). Bakpia is divided into two parts namely crust and ingredient. The crust of bakpia was made from wheat flour mixed with water, and salt. The ingredient of bakpia was made from the mung beans (kacang hijau), sugar, vanillin, salt, and fried oil.

Many people sell bakpia as their economic resources. Visitor who came from another part of Java came to Jogja then buy bakpia to bring back to their home city. Especially in holiday season, tourists number amount increasingly high. People who lived near to Malioboro Street tried to improving their living standard. You can get a box of bakpia for Rp 20.000 - Rp 25.000. It's not too expensive. As sellers they will give you many kinds of bakpia. You can choose the bakpia which you prefer to. For westerners, bakpia combined with cheese inside.

Bakpia is growing as a part of people economic live. Many people then tried to open stores in outer ring road of Yogyakarta. It's 15 km away from Pathuk. People see bakpia as an opportunity. It's sweet like mostly Javanese food then making a lot of money like a Chinese man.

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