roti tugu bakery klepon ijo

Jajanan pasar are a type of snack foods, traditionally made by small home businesses (usually one-woman operations) and sold in small shops in the market. These small shops would usually have the snack loosely plastic wrapped but unsealed, but sometimes the plastic may also be sealed crudely (candles are used to burn the plastic and plastic together), and other times they can also be unwrapped and simply stacked against each other in a large tray.

These types of jajanan are almost like a staple diet of my sister's childhood. My sister was (and still is) the champion eater of all types of jajanan. I, on the other hand, was very picky with what I eat, so much so that my mother was worried that my reluctance might be the cause why I was stick thin and too short for my age. Everytime the mbok pasar - what we call the lady who make the rounds from house to house to sell her jajanan - comes around, my mother had to force me to pick one, whilst my sister would pick hers happily.

My mother got even more worried when feeding me all those jajanan did nothing to my stature, one single bit. So, what does a mother to do next? Well, she had me take a tablet of combantrin®, a worminator, because she suspected my growth is stunted by worms!! This, to her disappointment, didn't work either. She shouldn't have worried so much. Fortunately, as I got older I can out-eat any of my sisters and almost all of my cousins. And it turns out I am just built shorter and thinner than most people.

Mbok-mbok pasar, who sells their ware from shop to shop, house to house, are hard to come by these days. This is partly because jajanan are being outsold by nifty new snacks introduced from abroad, as evidenced by the proliferation of donut shops, bread shops, coffee shops in Malang. Even Malang has starbucks!!!!

To buy jajanan pasar these days, you'd have to go to an actual pasar (market) - wet or dry, a supermarket, or a specialty shop selling only jajanan. Roti Tugu Bakery comes under the last category.

The bakery is an attachment to the posh Tugu Hotel property, and it is not where the locals would usually buy their jajanan. As you can imagine, it is geared towards the upper middle class and the tourists. As such, the shop is thoughtfully decorated with javanese and dutch influences, similar to the decor of the hotel. The shopkeeper is friendly and helpful, but not overbearing.

But who is this fella here?

What I most like about the bakery is how it makes all its jajanan little, cute, bite-sized pieces, perhaps influenced by the french petit fours? It is after all owned by the only 5-star hotel in Malang.

Talam ubi ungu, klepon ijo, sawut - Rp 15,000 each

I tried not to be greedy and picked only three of these cuties to bring home.

The talam ubi ungu is soft and sweet, made out of purple yam, different types of flour and coconut milk, topped with a slice of sweet banana.

The klepon ijo are chewy balls scented and coloured with pandan, rolled in desiccated coconut, inside the chewy balls is the surprise of the sweet palm sugar filling.

The sawut is made from shaved cassava (locally known as pohung) that has been scented with pandan and sweetened with palm sugar sprinkling that melted when steamed, all is then topped with desiccated coconut.

Roti Tugu Bakery
Jalan Kahuripan 3
Malang JAWA TIMUR
Open 7 days 5am-11pm