Medan Souvenir Stall · Honeycomb Cake
Bika Ambon
Photo: Agus Damanik / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
Despite the name, it has nothing to do with Ambon island a thousand miles away — the cake was created and is still made almost exclusively in Medan, North Sumatra, and historians still argue over how the misleading name ever stuck.
A springy, honeycomb-textured cake gets its distinctive holes from a yeast-and-palm-wine batter of tapioca starch, egg, and coconut milk, baked until the surface turns golden and the pandan-scented interior stays chewy. Medan street stalls and bakeries sell it sliced as the city's defining edible souvenir.
Why it's made this way: The cake likely descends from a Malay bika recipe leavened with palm sap, adapted and perfected by Medan bakers into a texture and flavor now tied to the city, whatever the true story behind its name turns out to be.
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