Chinese New Year in Indonesia: Historic factory makes thousands of traditional basket cakes

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In Indonesia, a factory is preserving the old way of making traditional Chinese basket cakes. Hundreds of workers use wood and coal to fire up tonnes of cake mixture that takes up to 12 hours to make. CGTN's Silkina Ahluwalia takes you inside this historic factory in Jakarta.

In a historic factory, just outside of Jakarta, the smell of burnt sugar fills the air.

Workers at Ms. Lauw's factory are busy stirring buckets of coconut milk and sugar, preparing to make thousands of traditional cakes for the Chinese New Year.

The tradition that has been passed down for three generations. Reny Lauw is now the woman behind her family's business.

RENY LAUW OWNER, MS LAUW CAKE "The business started with my grandfather. Then it was passed down to my mother-in-law and now my husband and I are in charge of it."

Reny still remembers celebrating Chinese New Year and enjoying these cakes as a child with her grandfather and that's part of the reason why she wants to keep preserving the olden ways of hand-making the basket cakes.

SILKINA AHLUWALIA JAKARTA, INDONESIA "For the past 50 years, this factory has been making the delicious basket cakes daily and using this traditional method. It's only produced twice a year, during Chinese New Year and the Islamic holiday of Ramadan."

Ms. Lauw is one of the only factories in Jakarta that still uses equipment and methods from decades ago.

Ms. Lauw is known for two different kinds of sticky cakes. One is the Chinese basket cake made out of rice flour and sugar, the other is a traditional Indonesian cake made out of coconut milk and palm sugar.

Only fresh ingredients are used to make all of the cakes. Fresh coconuts to make coconut milk, Organic sugar to sweeten the cakes and locally-grown banana leaves to wrap the basket cakes with.

The mixture is stirred by hand until it becomes thick, sticky and sweet. Around 200 workers take turns for 8 to 12 hours to reach the perfect consistency.

RENY LAUW OWNER, MS LAUW CAKE "Our customers tell us that the texture of our cakes is softer than others. It has just the right amount of sweetness and the color is perfect too. Banana leaves have a nice aroma. We have cakes wrapped in plastic too but the demand for that is quite low."

These cakes are not only delicious. They signify an important meaning for many of the Chinese in Indonesia.

The sticky texture symbolizes togetherness and the cakes are used as an offering to the Gods to bring in more luck and blessings to their homes throughout the year.

Silkina Ahluwalia, CGTN, Jakarta.