Unless you have access to homemade ambon (an Indonesian kueh loved for its super chewy, bouncy texture owing to its honeycomb structure), the kueh is likely to disappoint. Most chain store-bought ambon in Singapore is often dry yet somehow greasy, and lacking in fragrance. Thus, 33-year-old Nigel Cai and 30-year-old Amber Yew decided to bake it at home for Amber’s mother, who fell in love with the kueh after they bought some back from their travels in Indonesia a few years ago. Nigel is a broker while Amber is a banker by day. While they started baking the kueh from Amber’s family’s HDB flat in Ang Mo Kio simply as a passion project, friends and family encouraged them to sell it after trying their ambon. “We were, in all honesty, just baking for Amber’s mum,” says Nigel. “But when COVID-19 hit and everybody started selling things from home, we felt it was an opportunity to try our hand out at starting the business,” he adds. So, even though their jobs were not impacted by the pandemic, The Honey Comb Cake was born in May this year.

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Ambon is a finicky kueh that’s famously hard to get right. That's why it's not commonly found at bakeries in Singapore. It’s traditionally made from a yeasted batter (toddy is used in some of the older versions, but since it’s unavailable in Singapore, some people replace it with coconut flower sap) containing eggs, coconut milk and scented with aromatics like pandan, lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves. Traditionally, the batter has to rest for hours before being slowly toasted on a stovetop or charcoal grill. It is, perhaps, like the Southeast Asian counterpart of the French canelé: both have to have a good honeycomb structure internally, and call for a lot of precision in the preparation process.

“We started baking ambon two months before the lockdown in April, and it took us about two months to nail it,” shares Nigel. “We were really lucky as it’s a very challenging cake to make and usually takes many trials and failures, but we managed to get the recipe right quite quickly.” The couple worked from recipes found online, and bake their kueh in an oven instead of the stove.

A cake that takes three hours of fermentation and another hour of baking, making ambon isn’t exactly an easy breezy weekend project though. The duo have only time to bake on weekends and public holidays, and have to start work at 3am to make the cakes fresh for same-day delivery. They currently bake about 25 cakes each day, and 50 per weekend, but Nigel shares that they have the capacity to comfortably produce about 40 cakes a day. Delivery is complimentary for orders of more than two boxes, and are done by Nigel and Amber personally. This means that their work only ends at around 6pm. Despite the long hours involved, Nigel and Amber have no complains and giggle when we ask if this project is good for their relationship. “I think so, lah,” says Amber with a laugh. Despite having less free time on weekends, they plan to continue with the biz as they feel that they’ve created a good product worthy of sharing with more people.

Nigel and Amber make one thing and one thing only: ambon. “It takes a very long time to make ambon, and it can fail if not that every component is exactly right,” says Nigel. “If it isn’t the primary kueh that you are selling, it is unlikely for any business to put so much effort into creating ambon that is especially good.” Since starting the business, the duo have also gone around to try almost all of the ambon available on the market and are confident that theirs is one of the best.

​​​​​​​Despite taking the effort to make the kueh for Amber’s mother, the duo are ironically not crazy about ambon themselves. “We didn’t grow up eating ambon. In fact, I don’t even like chewy food, so it’s a bit ironic,” says Nigel with a laugh. Because of this he isn’t obsessed about “recreating” a certain taste, and isn’t averse to trying out new flavours either. The Honey Comb Cake offers ambon in three flavours: original, orange and brown sugar with cinnamon.

If you are used to the intensely rich flavours of Indonesian-style ambon, The Honey Comb Cake’s ambon will present quite a bit of a surprise. The seven-inch wide, rather squat one-inch tall round cakes ($35 each) have been customised to be much less sweet and oily than usual. “We wanted to make something that one can finish about half in one seating,” says Nigel. Half of a seven-inch ambon? “No joke,” says Nigel deadpan. “Our ambon can be kept for five to eight days if stored properly, but we like our customers to be able to eat more of it fresh, without feeling jelak.” The Honey Comb Cake’s ambon has also been created to appeal to the health-conscious who are cautious about their sugar intake.

Nigel describes a perfect ambon as fragrant with the perfume of pandan, kaffir lime leaves and other aromatic Asian ingredients. “It shouldn’t be too yeasty, or eggy, and definitely not just plain sweet” says Nigel. They admit that theirs’ isn’t quite the perfect ambon, but are constantly working to improve on the recipe. While their original ambon did not incorporate kaffir lime leaves or lemongrass at the beginning, Nigel and Amber have introduced the former into their recipe now. “We actually tried using lemongrass, but found the fragrance lacking. Now, we incorporate kaffir lime leaves by grinding the leaves into a powder and boiling it with the coconut milk used for the batter.” The Honey Comb Cake’s ambon does not contain any artificial flavourings or preservatives.

This cake is certainly a step up from the chain bakery variety ambon in terms of texture: moist, tender and springy from a good honeycomb structure. However, with the sugar reduced, the coconut milk in it modest and the omission of fragrant coconut flower sap (which gives ambon its distinct flavour) from their recipe, we found the aroma and taste so light that it was almost uncharacteristic of a kueh. This writer also misses the deeply caramelised undercarriage of a traditional pan-toasted ambon.

Nigel’s personal favourite, inspired by an orange chiffon cake he and Amber baked before. “We wondered if a fresh, zesty flavour could work in an ambon — and the results were really good!” says Nigel. The piece we tried had the most impressive structure of the three flavours, with lots of tiny tunnels running through the cake from top to bottom – in fact the texture is probably the most perfect in any ambon we’ve tasted. We just wish the cake had more height, giving us more to sink our teeth into. The orange flavour is very, very subtle on the palate, but it does have a nice citrusy fragrance.

Cinnamon powder gives this brown sugar number a different edge. And while the flavours are still extremely subtle, this ambon is the most distinct in flavour among the three. However, this cake we sampled was moist to the point of being wet and sticky at parts, and felt heavier and stodgier than the others. It also reminded us of the Chinese-style yeasted brown sugar steamed cakes. That said, even the most pro cooks we know have had bad ambon days when the cake just refused to turn out the way it should.

We enjoyed the kueh’s soft, chewy texture — and it stays pretty perfect even after refrigeration, as long as you steam it before eating — but wish the flavours could be amped up. We also miss the caramelised browned bottom only a stovetop-cooked ambon made the traditional way will have (theirs is oven-baked). However, we’d like to think the young couple’s rendition of this painstakingly made, underrated kueh will only improve with time. Prices are decent too, for such a finicky-to-make confection.

Photos: Koh Yuen Lin