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Of Birthdays Past

Today, as I turn another year older (and hopefully wiser, more grounded and centered too), a wave of nostalgia has washed over me.

For the past many years (too many to count on both hands and feet ), on each birthday, I get presented with an elegantly made cake from some 5-star hotel or renowned patisserie. These cakes are all very delicious, very refined, very elegant and, well, everything else that a “classy” cake should be. Yet, somehow, they seem to have lost their meaning and significance. I can buy and eat these cakes at any time during the year – which I do – and they are no longer special to birthdays.

And so my mind has been wandering back across time… to those years when each birthday cake was so terribly special and unique to me. The years when I always looked forward with great anticipation and excitement, months and months ahead of my birthday, to getting my birthday cake. The years when each cake was lovingly made by my mum, just for me. Yes, those were the years when each cake was unique to me; no one else would ever have that exact same birthday cake.

In this nostalgic frame of mind, I have been flipping through my old photo albums, looking at pictures of the birthday cakes of my childhood, and reliving some very beautiful memories. I would now like to invite you to take a walk with me, down this path of cake reminiscing…

My very first birthday cake was an elaborate affair: Humpty Dumpty celebrated my first milestone year with me. I should have been too young then to have any clear recollection of the cake. But I do. I remember it vividly. For some reason, I even have memories, albeit rather vague and foggy memories, about my mum having some incident with either a broken egg or an unsuccessful attempt in creating Humpty Dumpty. I remember hearing her discussing with my aunt how to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, quite literally. How was I to have known about such things at 12 months old? I do not know. But that is something that has stuck in my mind through all these decades. And strange as it may sound, I remember very clearly how happy I felt about my first birthday cake – as you can see from my wide 2-tooth grin in the top picture!

But there was only so much photo-taking and waiting to tuck into the cake that a one year old could handle. So, after a couple of minutes of patient smiling for the camera, I was ready for action. When were we going to cut the cake already? (Notice how the cake was deliberately kept at a very safe distance from me? )

Yet, when the time did come to cut the cake, was my attention on the cake? Nooooo… I was too busy eyeing the guys at my birthday party! What can I say?

My second birthday was a simpler affair; yet still filled with a lot of love and warmth. I had a heart shaped cake decorated with Smarties – my “most favoritest” candy at the time.

See how demure I looked as I obediently kept my hands away from the cake, just as I was told to do? But what the camera did not subsequently record, and which my mum and aunts have recounted to me many times in the past, was that I honored that request for all of 30 seconds; just long enough for this shot to be taken. Then, before my parents or anyone else could remove me a safe distance from the cake, I had stuck not one finger, not even two fingers, but my entire hand… palm, fingers, the lot… into the cake. But really, what was a 2 year old to do in the face of so much yummy, soft white cream and colorful Smarties?

Here’s an interesting side note: notice how much like a boy I looked as a 2 year old? I think even my parents were a little worried back then. My favorite toys at that age, or so I have been told, were fire engines, aeroplanes, trucks and excavators! Fortunately, I outgrew my boyish phase, and have turned out to be quite the opposite!

My third birthday cake was one I remembered so very fondly for many, many years. It was another of my mum’s very dedicated and loving creations: a choo-choo train, replete with a box carriage filled with all sorts of wonderful sweets and candies. I had such vivid memories of the engine’s smiling face, the cotton wool smoke, and of feeling rather upset as all the other kids tried to steal the candy from the carriage!

Ah! The sight of all that food – all the “must-haves” for birthday parties of that time – brings back a flood of memories. Red-dyed hard boiled eggs, cubes of agar-agar, cocktail sausages on toothpicks, fried chicken wings, curry puffs… a table laden with abundant goodies.

My beloved late paternal grandmother, who loved and doted on me so dearly, helping me to do the honors.

By the time I was four, I was old enough to start making requests of my mother for the birthday cakes I wanted. And for some reason, I really wanted a cake in the shape of a house. It had to be a chocolate house, I specified. Oh yes, by that tender age, I had already developed a deep and abiding love for this dark ambrosia of the Gods; a love that has stayed with me to this day.

My clearest memory of this birthday cake? How patient and committed my mum was to giving me the cake I wanted. By then, I was old enough to be in the kitchen with my mum, watching and helping (or hindering, depending on how you look at it) her mix, bake and decorate the cake. And oh how she had to struggle with this cake. She had intended to create the roof of the house with butter cake, but that didn’t work. After spending a few hours trying this and that without success, we finally ended up with a roof made out of cardboard.

I remember how the roof was somewhat too heavy for the rest of the cake, and the house started to lilt a little. I also remember how there was much belly-aching laughter all round as I tried to cut through the very hard cardboard roof without success. The cake may not have been perfect looking, but it was perfect to me for the love that my mum had put into it. (Sorry, I don’t mean to sound so cheesy, but this cake does bring back some very special memories.)

It was sort of appropriate that for my fifth birthday I had a cake fashioned after the May Pole. I had watched fascinated as my mum so very carefully piped that intricate lattice design on to the top of the cake. And weren’t those sugar animals just the cutest?

This was a cake I picked out months before my birthday. My mum had a cookbook – the exact name of which I cannot now recall – which was filled with all manner of children birthday cakes; each recipe came with a glorious full color photo of the cake. I spent hours poring over the book; nearly every cake in there was one that I wanted! I think at the time I probably wished birthdays came once a month and not once a year, so that I could have all those cakes made for me!

After much internal struggle, I finally settled on the swimming pool design. And as had become ritual, my mum and I spent an afternoon in the kitchen decorating the cake together. We made green jello for the water, used pink dessicated coconut to pave the pathway and lined it with jelly sweets. Carefully we surrounded the cake with Cadbury’s milk chocolate fingers. What fun we had; each time we inadvertently broke one of those chocolate fingers, we simply popped them into our mouths.

Now, every girl has to have a Doll cake at some point. I mean, isn’t that some sort of ritualized tradition? And so I had mine on my seventh birthday.

I love my mum’s attention to detail. Look at the little rosette that my mum had piped onto the doll’s bodice. And that pert little lace hat. And oh, don’t you just love those two cute Bambis? That was my special request (at the time, I was going through my besotted-with-Bambi phase); and my mum never refused any of my birthday cake requests.

Another birthday tradition I think: every child seems to need a cake in the shape of a number. Mine came in the shape of an 8. Simple, yet lovingly made. It was very tasty too.

By the time I was nine, I seemed to have lost a lot of my interest in home-made birthday cakes. I guess at that age, such things seemed, well, passé. I wanted to be like my friends, whose mums never made them birthday cakes; theirs were always store-bought. I thought that was just the coolest. The follies of youth!

So for that year, my mum made me another number-shaped cake. That was the last of my home-made birthday cakes. It was around this time that we started the new tradition of buying ready-made cakes for birthdays. It was novel then. To buy a beautifully decorated cake from the cake shop was such an exciting process to me. I was taken to the cake shop and could gaze in wonderment at all the gorgeous cakes on display, and then pick out any design that I wanted.

So, we come full circle. Now, decades on, I have become jaded and uninspired by cakes made by the top pastry chefs of the land; I hunger for home-made simplicity. I long for cakes made with love and dedication. I hanker for a confection that is less refined, rustic almost; something that speaks to my heart.

I have thus, for the very first time in my life, made my own birthday cake. I have never ever given myself a birthday cake. And I like the feeling. I like the feeling a lot.

And here, I would like to pay a small tribute to my mum – for making each childhood birthday so incredibly special, for giving me so many precious birthday memories, and for inspiring my love for baking. While I may not have inherited her talent for cake decorating, I think I have definitely inherited her love of baking.

Thank you, mum!

On a final note, here’s something I would like to share with you. As I was going through the photo albums, I found this photo…

I was six months old, and it was my very first Christmas. Was I a chubby baby or what? Oh my! Look at that pram! What memories! So terribly English, no? My dad actually had that pram imported all the way from England, at a time when Mothercare was still unheard of in these parts. Heh. I even had on a dress with an Elizabethan collar to match the pram!

Okay, here’s something else: when I mentioned to friends that I was going to post my baby pictures, they threw me a challenge… Thus far, I have very consciously stayed rather anonymous online. Sure, my name is plastered all over this blog, but I have avoided putting up pictures of humans (have you noticed?). But my friends have been egging me and twisting my arm to post a picture of grown-up me.

So, after some “manhandling” from my beloved friends , I acquiesce and here it is (for a short time only): me, many Christmases on from that very first one, having a bit of a laugh posing in front of the camera…

Copyright © 2004 Renee Kho. All Rights Reserved.
Please contact me for permission to copy, publish, distribute or display any of the images or text contained in this article.

Potong! Cut the Heat!

The weather has been sizzling the past few weeks. Way hotter than it has any business being at this time of the year. Sure, we are living in the tropics, so warm weather is to be expected. But it’s only May, and not August, and yet, over the last month or so, on many (too many) days, temperatures indoors have been a melting 30-31C (that’s 86-88F, if you prefer). That’s hot! For indoors. With full ventilation. Even with the air-conditioning going, it is sometimes still a very warm 26C (79F) in the house. The occasional brief showery spells do little to cool the air.

Step outside the building, and within a couple of minutes, your clothes start to cling damply to your skin. Your brows start to bead furiously with perspiration. The skin feels the burning intensity of the relentless sun. Your breathing is weighed down by the heavy humidity that envelops the air like a deep impenetrable fog. You feel clammy, muggy and just downright uncomfortable. And you thought living in the tropics is all sun-shiney fun?

But… when it gets this hot, this sunny… when the temperature sizzles, one of the best ways to “chill” is… with ice cream!

In South East Asia, eating ice cream in a cone is a fairly recent development. Recent being in the last 25-30 years or so, I would guess. Before that, ice cream was mainly sold and eaten sandwiched between a slice of bread or two pieces of thin wafer biscuits. (Of course, before ice cream even made its entry into Asian culture, we had the now long extinct ice ball with syrup. My parents still tell stories of how, as kids, getting 5 cents to buy a huge ice ball was such a rare and luxurious treat. And that’s one ice ball shared between maybe 2-3 siblings, mind you. But those stories are for another post.)

We were walking along Orchard Road the other day, and with the heat being as oppressive as it was, we could not resist stopping at the “potong man” cart for some nostalgic ice cream. I had not had potong ice cream in a long, long time. Yes, it was true. I had become a full convert to the more “fashionable” premium ice creams and gelati. I still eat ice cream with bread – or toast, actually – at home, but it’s more likely to be Ben & Jerry’s with bread/toast. I had not had a potong with bread in ages.

But, who’s “potong man” and what is “potong ice cream” I hear you scream? (Ice cream, you scream… get it? ) Patience. I’m getting there. “Potong” is the Malay word meaning “cut” or “to cut”. And “potong ice cream” is quite literally “cut ice cream”, or ice cream that is cut with a knife rather than scooped with a, well, scoop. And naturally, the “potong man” is the man who sells potong ice cream.

Whereas, in the good old days, the potong man would come around the housing estates on his “manual” tricycle, ringing his little bell, this particular “potong man” (pictured above) is stationed almost every day, with his motorized tricycle, on his “regular” corner at one of the busiest junctions of Orchard Road, just outside Ngee Ann City. He actually has a competitor just across the road from him, on the other corner of this busy crossroads, just outside Paragon. But there is no ill-will. Each man recognizes the other’s territory. Each sticks to his “own” side of Orchard Road. No one tries to steal the other’s customers. It’s all very gentlemanly and cordial. One will not speak ill of the other.

It is a fascinating scene of marked contrasts, and yet it seems perfectly natural to have this throw-back to a gentler, more gentlemanly way of doing business existing right on the door-steps of the icons of 21st Century cut-throat business competition and hard-sell branding. Here, on a street lined chock-a-block with modern glass, steel and concrete buildings that are temples of modern consumerism, and right in front of the glitzy Chanel and Cartier stores, this humble ice cream man with his tricycle, albeit a motorized one, sits in strange yet harmonious juxtaposition.

This ice cream man does brisk business. During the 10-15 minutes or so that we stood around eating our ice creams, he saw a near-continuous flow of customers. Many were obviously regulars, whose ice cream preferences were already known to him. Others were tourists, drawn by the small crowd around the tricycle to also try out this uniquely Asian ice cream style. And then there were the rare one or two “idiotic” Singaporeans behaving like tourists in their own land (ahem! we shan’t name any names), toting digital cameras, and trying very hard to capture the ice cream man’s every move and action, much to his bemusement and amusement.

During any brief lull in business, friends and “chatting” cronies stopped by to exchange a joke or the latest piece of gossip with him. Everyone was affable and friendly. They happily included us in their conversations simply because we had bothered to stop and eat our ice creams there, next to the cart. Quite frankly, to me, this ice cream man seemed a lot more contented and fulfilled than a lot of the well-dressed and well-heeled professionals that were hurrying past him with intense, harried frowns, many laden with shopping bags bearing designer names and logos.

But back to the ice cream. In the olden days, ice cream was sold in rectangular blocks, and not rounded scoops, with each rectangle of ice cream sandwiched between two pieces of thin wafers…

Or between a slice of local fluffy “kopitiam” bread…

The traditional “potong” flavors were distinctly South East Asian ones like red bean (with coconut milk), sweet corn and yam…

… but are now joined by more “modern” flavors like strawberry swirl, chocolate chip and chocolate. As well as some “newer” South East Asian flavors like mango, honeydew and durian (yes, it’s rather strange, isn’t it? this is such a tropical fruit, and yet until probably the last decade or so, it has not really been used to flavor ice cream).

Each flavor, regardless of whether served with bread or wafer, is priced at S$1.00 (US$0.60). Not bad at all, considering that just a few steps away, in the air-conditioned food court, a scoop of the same ice cream will probably set you back S$2.50.

Of course, even the humble potong ice cream is not completely immune to the relentless march towards modernization. The ice cream, as noted on the flavor chart, is nowadays made by the big food company Magnolia. Gone are the days when these ice creams were hand-made in small batches in small, often family-run, factories.

I had really wanted the red-bean flavor, which is my favorite. But for some strange reason, the potong version didn’t come in red bean. I could have red bean served in a plastic cup though, suggested the ice cream man helpfully. But I also had my heart set on eating my ice cream with bread, the good old-fashioned way. So I settled on yam, my next favorite flavor.

The bread used by this potong man came in cheery, pastel colors of pink, orange and green. He said they were specially made by the bread factory for potong men! These were the same type of fluffy “kopitiam bread” that one could easily buy in the supermarkets or grocery stores, only prettier (I guess) than the ubiquitous white.

I wanted the pink one, and he good-naturedly obliged.

After decades (as he informed us with pride) of serving up ice cream in this way, his movements in cutting, unwrapping and sandwiching the ice cream were so swift and practiced it was so difficult to capture him on camera! It was almost like poetry in motion, albeit speeded up poetry!

(By the way, the following three pictures are of him serving another customer… and thus the disparity between the color of this ice cream, and the one I eventually had!)

Once you inform him of your preferred flavor, and how you would like it served… with the wafer biscuits or with bread, he quickly reaches down into the metal refrigerated box of his tricycle and fishes out an oblong “brick” of ice cream measuring, oh, maybe 5 inches by 12 inches. He doesn’t need to look or check, almost just by feel he seems to know precisely which brick of ice cream in his refrigerator is which flavor!

Then using a sizeable chopping knife he proceeds to cut a small chunk of ice cream from the larger brick. The smaller rectangle of ice cream is about 2½ inches by 5 inches. Again, just by his practiced eye judgment, every single serving of ice cream comes up just about exactly equal in size.

Working very quickly, he slits and flips open the top flap of the cardboard wrapper shielding the ice cream.

Like seamless movements of a fluid dance routine, he reaches effortlessly to the side of his tricycle for a slice of bread, and cups it over the brick of ice cream. As he lifts the ice cream with the bread, his other hand, in perfect coordination, smoothly tears away the rest of the cardboard packaging. With a big warm smile he hands you your ice cream, sandwiched between the piece of soft fluffy bread, and served on a sheet of clear plastic, to help keep your hands clean and dry while tucking into the ice cream.

And here is my ice cream. Isn’t it pretty? The color pairing. The light gentle lilac of the yam ice cream with the pretty and happy pastel pink of the bread, with a swoosh of white thrown in for artistic measure.

The bread has a cloud-like softness and fluffiness (as you can see, even the lightest pressure on the bread leaves a deep and distinct thumb impression!), which goes rather well with the cold creaminess of the ice cream. It’s all about contrasts. A contrast in the textures, density and temperatures of the bread and frozen milk. And it all comes together very harmoniously.

He had opted for the sweet corn flavor with the wafer biscuits. The procedure is almost the same. The large brick of sweet corn ice cream is extricated from the refrigerated container. A perfectly sized and portioned oblong cube is sliced off. But then comes a slight difference. In the old days, the ice cream man would have to place the two pieces of wafer on either side of the ice cream cube before removing the wrapper. However, these modern factory-produced versions actually come with the wafers already packaged into the larger brick. When the wrapper is removed, the wafers are already in place and the ice cream can be served immediately. And in contrast to the bread version, you don’t get a plastic sheet to protect your fingers with. I don’t know why this is so. But it seems to be presumed that wafers offer better protection against melting ice cream than a piece of bread!

And oh, there is actually a third way in which you can choose to have your ice cream. In one of the containers is a jumble of flavors… it’s all there… chocolate, sweet corn, yam and yes, red bean. If you ask for ice cream in a cup, the ice cream man will reach deep into this cavity and scoop out a bit of each of the flavors you have requested (yes, you can have a whole mix of flavors). And to top it all off, you can even ask for a sprinkle of ground peanuts on top of the ice cream. The price? Still S$1.00.

(Sorry, slightly out of focus picture here. His hand was moving so fast, it took him mere seconds to scoop up a cupful of ice cream. It was quite a task trying to capture a single stilled moment in his frenetic and ceaseless movements!)

So we stood there, happily transported back in time almost, munching on our ice creams. But with the weather as warm as it was that day, we had to eat very quickly. It didn’t help that each serving of ice cream was huge! Probably equivalent to about 2 standard scoops of ice cream! It became almost a competition between ice cream and us. Could we eat faster than the ice cream could melt? As it turned out… Yep. Just about. But not without both of us ending up with brain freeze. You know that feeling. That achy, light headed feeling you get when you eat or drink something cold way quicker than is good for you.

Okay, after all that, here is a bit of a let down. How did the ice cream taste? Not at all like how I remembered it from my childhood days. I remember the taste of real yam and milk in the ice cream. Sure, these were very creamy concoctions. After all, factory machines are designed to ensure that everything they churn out have a smooth, creamy texture. But where was the yam flavor? On extended (or more like permanent) hiatus it would seem. The sweet corn one fared slightly better. We could taste some sweet corn with the occasional small bits of corn thrown in for good measure. But all in, it was a far cry and a pale shadow of its former tastes. Or maybe our palates had just become trained and accustomed to the more intensely and richly flavored premium ice creams and gelati. Still, I was rather disappointed.

I remember remarking at the time that I would have preferred to have gotten a McD soft-serve cone for 25 cents. Yes! 25 cents! That’s only US15 cents! For a full-sized McD ice cream cone. I mean, seriously, in this day and age, what could you possibly get for 25 cents? Not a lot. Not a lot at all. But, you could get one whole McD soft-serve. And for the two bucks we spent on the potongs, we could have gotten eight McD cones! And I think they would have tasted better than this Magnolia version.

Still, I was truly glad for the opportunity to take a walk down memory lane. It was nice. For those few minutes, time stood still. In that little corner of Orchard Road, life was slower, quieter, more relaxed. There was a certain serenity and contentment. People were friendly and chatty. Right in the midst of the hustle and bustle of Singapore’s premium shopping belt, there was this small pocket of existence where the “kampong (or village) spirit” of the 60s and 70s still prevailed.

Yam potong ice cream. $1.00. Sweet corn potong ice cream. $1.00. One of Life’s timeless and precious memories. Priceless.

Copyright © 2004 Renee Kho. All Rights Reserved.
Please contact me for permission to copy, publish, distribute or display any of the images or text contained in this article.