Celebrating Gawai for the 4th time in Brissie Town

This is slightly late, but I was really busy over the weekend with Dragon Boating, which I will blog about later... So, gawai... Gawai is... wiki it!! That's what wikipedia is for! :P Anyway, it is celebrated on the 1st of June, in Sarawak, Malaysia, and so... I decided to have one huge dinner for my friends and I here in Brissie. This is the time when I normally get homesick too, so heaps of good local goodness.

When I think about gawai, I think about open houses, and that leads to cakes and tidbits, and yummy food. One local delicacy that Sarawak is famous for is its Kek Lapis, which literally means, layer cake. Anyway, I decided to make this layer cake for gawai dinner. I found this chocolate cheese layer cake. I must say that for my first ever layer it was pretty good, although I burnt the first two layers... :( BLAME IT ON MASTERCHEF! :P I was watching master chef while baking.

my layer cake! 

This is pretty popular during festivals in Malaysia and Singapore - during Chinese New Year, Hari Raya, and no exception to Gawai as well... I tried looking for the recipe online but it was pretty hard to find. Who knew these were called Honey Joys, and it's apparently Australian/Kiwi! I think I nailed it - everyone loved them!

 my honey joys!

I made the layer cake and the honey joys before Friday (Gawai Day) - because you would normally have them ready before your open house. And so I did. I really enjoyed baking them! Of course there were a couple panic attacks - "LENE! OMG, this doesn't taste like cheese at all!" "This taste like rice!" "Omg, it's not setting!!". Haha... But thankfully they turned out alright and omg, ate so so so much!

Come Gawai Day, the menu was - BBQ chicken & pork, ayam pansuh, belacan eggplant, and belacan spinach, Sarawakian fried rice (Nasi Aruk), and cincalok and ulam. I also made lime juice for the dinner. 

I made everything so I guess it was a little late with starting dinner having to wait for the meat to cook on the barbie, and also for me to finish cooking everything else. I managed to start the fire - yay me! and luckily my friend, Bryan arrive not too long later to get everything going.

 trying to get the coals burning

yummy pork and chicken being BBQed..

at last everything on the table!

Everything went well, although the night ended pretty early, and ended untypically gawai-ish... meaning that no one was drunk..haha! I take it as a good thing though... not fun nursing hangovers so near to exams. Next time I think I should attempt making tempoyak... :D