Cafe Degan
If you’ve never heard of this traditional German dessert before, don’t worry, neither had we until we were completely blown away by it at Café Degan, the rustic Indonesian café on Jalan Petitenget. The cake consists of three key parts: a whipped vanilla cream in the middle, a sandwich of moist, vanilla sponges, then finally, a crunchy coating of thinly sliced caramelised almonds baked onto the top. The sponges are incredibly soft and supple, making the almonds seem extra crunchy in contrast to the other squishy layers.
The story behind the Bienenstich is also a very sweet one. Legend has it, the first baker to create the cake was stung by a bee during the baking process, thanks to its sugared ingredients and irresistible taste. So the baker decided to name the cake after this very incident. “Biene” actually means bee in German, and “stich” loosely translates to mean sting, so the dessert’s name literally means “bee sting cake”.
