Cimpa — Karo, Indonesia

Cimpa is a family of related cakes made by the Karo people of North Sumatra, all built from the same core ingredients: rice flour, grated coconut, and palm sugar. Several distinct cakes share the cimpa name, distinguished mainly by their shape and cooking method rather than by their base ingredients. The cakes are reported from the Karo highlands of North Sumatra, where they are tied to Kerja Tahun, an annual festival marking the harvest and the new year. Cimpa is generally prepared on the sixth day of that festival, and different households and villages tend to make one or more of the family's variants for the occasion. This entry describes cimpa tuang, meaning “poured cimpa,” the variant cooked as a loose batter rather than wrapped or steamed. Rice flour is mixed with grated coconut, melted palm sugar, and water into a batter thinner than a cake mix but thicker than a crepe, then ladled into a hot, lightly oiled pan and cooked on both sides like a pancake until the edges turn golden and slightly crisp. What distinguishes cimpa tuang from its siblings, cimpa unung-unung, wrapped in singkut leaves, and cimpa bohan, cooked inside bamboo, is exactly this direct pan-frying: because the batter is never enclosed, it cooks faster and develops a crisp edge and a soft, slightly chewy center, rather than the steamed texture the wrapped and bamboo-cooked versions take on.