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Bika Ambon (Indonesian Honeycomb Cake) is a popular cake from Indonesia. Its bright yellow color with bouncy texture really makes it different among other cakes. The making process is quite easy to follow, but somehow challenging.

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Bika Ambon is a yellow, bouncy and fragrant cake. It is beautiful with lots of strands from the honeycomb cake texture. Sweet flavor comes with a hint of lime and lemongrass.

It is basically a honeycomb cake. Made with eggs, coconut milk and tapioca flour. The honeycomb texture comes from perfect yeast fermentation.

Bika Ambon that is one of the many popular Traditional Desserts in Indonesia. It was first introduced in Medan, North Sumatera.

Because of its wonderful flavor and texture, this cake become popular all over Indonesia and many people bring it as souvenir from Medan.

If you like this type of cake, you might want to check Malaysian Honeycomb cake and Mini Bika Ambon Pandan, which also has many holes created by fermentation. Another snack that uses fermentation is Pukis.

Recipe Ingredients

Ingredient Notes

Coconut milk mixture – The coconut milk mixture will determine the color, fragrant and texture of the cake. Keffir lime leaves, lemongrass, and pandan leaves will give an aromatic flavor. Ground turmeric will add more yellow color.

Cook the mixture until it boils. The heat will bring out the flavor even more and when you keep the coconut mixture overnight, it will even be more fragrant the next day.

If you want to use the coconut milk on the same day, please remember to leave it to cool to warm to the touch temperature before mixing it with the yeast.

The heat will kill the yeast instantly, while the warm temperature will help ferment the whole batter perfectly. So, leave the coconut milk until warm before mixing it together with the yeast.

Egg Yolks – If you research the recipe for Bika Ambon online, you will find that there are recipes that use a lot of egg yolks and some only use two or three eggs.

Egg yolks will give a beautiful yellow color to the cake, especially egg yolks from free range farm. If you use whole eggs, you can add a bit of yellow coloring with turmeric to it.

Instant yeast – Dry instant yeast is the one ingredient that helps with the fermentation and gives the honeycomb structure of the cake.

Check your yeast before using it. Use warm water and stir well, leave it for 15 minutes. If it is bubbly, the yeast is still good to go.

Back in the old days, people in Medan use neera water that comes from palm’s flower. Its natural sweetness can help the fermentation in Bika Ambon Cake.

In a traditional way, neera water is used instead of instant yeast to form the honeycomb texture.

Sugar – In my baking experience, I always reduce the amount of sugar in a recipe. To me, making Bika Ambon is quite challenging. The amount of sugar in the recipe is mostly a lot.

At first, I was worried the cake would be too sweet. But later, a friend of mine told me that the sugar will be consumed by the yeast during fermentation process.

The original recipe uses regular white sugar, but you may also use palm sugar or brown sugar. The taste from palm sugar will be more caramel and nutty. But I don’t like the color of the cake.

The original Bika Ambon is bright yellow in color. It looks beautiful and more tempting or maybe I’m just used to it.

When I use palm sugar or brown sugar, the cake’s color becomes light brown. Even though the taste is unique with the caramel nutty flavor, I still like it better with the regular sugar.

Flour – The flour used for making this Indonesian honeycomb cake is mostly tapioca flour. It creates a bouncy and chewy texture.

However, there are several recipes combining tapioca flour with cake flour or with glutinous rice flour. The result is still bouncy and chewy.

You may experiment on many different recipes as long as you understand the process and follow the baking method precisely.

Variations

The original cake which is yellow in color is the most popular one. Bika Ambon Pandan is the second favorite. It is green and for many pandan lovers, this is also an irresistible option because it is so fragrant.

Jackfruit, durian, chocolate, and cheese are also variations made from this wonderful cake. Nowadays, you can also experiment with matcha green tea and earl grey.

Make sure to eliminate lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves if you want to try strong flavors like earl grey, matcha green tea, chocolate, jackfruit, or durian.

Palm sugar is also another thing to try. However, you will not have the beautiful golden color. Instead it is brown with a unique flavor.

How to Make

Put coconut milk, kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass stalks, pandan leaves, and salt in a sauce pan. Bring to boil on a medium heat. Keep stirring with a spatula. (image 1, 2)
Turn off the stove and let it cool completely (image 3). You can also keep this overnight in the fridge to enhance the herbs flavor.
Mix the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. Pour in the warm coconut milk mixture into the dry ingredients and mix well (image 4, 5, 6). Cover with a cloth or a lid, let it ferment for 15-20 minutes.
After 20 minutes, the yeast will already be bubbly.
Mix eggs, sugar, and condensed milk with a whisk or hand mixer until the sugar dissolves or a little bit pale. Sieve flour into the batter. (image 7, 8, 9, 10)

photo collage of preparing the coconut milk for fermentation.

photo collage of preparing the egg batter.

Pour in the yeast mixture and coconut milk(image 11). Stir well with the whisk. Cover with cloth or cling wrap and let it ferment for at least 60 minutes (image 12, 13).
Preheat the oven or skillet and also the baking pan. After 60 minutes, the batter should be bubbly and rise up (image 14). Stir and pat with a spatula until the bubble subsides. Pour in the melted butter. Mix evenly.
Pour into a hot baking pan (image 15, 16). Be careful, always put on your baking gloves. Spray some water to test if the baking pan is hot enough.

photo collage of preparing the batter for fermentation.

Put the pan on the lower rack in the electrical oven (image 17). Put a wet cloth at the bottom of the baking pan. Bake with lower heat 190°C for 45-60 minutes. Check with a skewer if the cake is done or not (image 18). If the skewer comes out clean, it is done and you can move it to the upper rack (image 19).
Afterwards, turn off the lower heat and turn on the upper heat 180°C for 5-10 minutes to let the surface dry a little bit (image 20).
Please watch over it if you are baking this cake for the first time, do not leave it unattended. For me, 6-7 minutes is enough to make the surface a little brownish.
Take out of the oven and let it cool completely. Enjoy your honeycomb cake!

Pro Tips

Always heat up the baking pan before pouring the batter. Be careful. Use baking gloves.
If you want to make other flavors, take out the lemongrass, lime leaves and substitute with the flavor you like. The rest of the steps are the same.

FAQs

Tapioca flour is the most important ingredient in this cake. It gives this cake its chewy texture. There are recipes that combine tapioca flour with wheat flour, rice flour, or glutinous rice flour. However, tapioca is still needed as the main ingredient.

There are several factors that need to be checked. Check the yeast, it might be expired or the fermentation time might not be enough or the baking temperature is not high enough.

The batter will have bubble appearance on the surface. If you are not sure, you can extend the fermentation process a bit longer.

a photo of bika ambon honeycomb texture.

Storage

A good Bika Ambon cake will be fine even if you keep it in room temperature for 2 – 3 days. I would not recommend keeping it in room temperature if it is too hot coconut milk tends to go bad fast in hot weather.

It stays fresh in the chiller for up to 7 days. If you keep it in the freezer, it can stay up to one month.