Indonesian Spice Cake

The latest issue of Saveur arrived and with it a request from Darr to make Spekkuk Bumbu (a.k.a. Indonesian Spice Cake). So this afternoon, between trips to the dog park, I baked the cake while Darr worked on his homework outside on the patio. The cake turned out pretty good, I think, although the baking process is weird. The cake bakes in four stages, one stage for each layer. You would think this would lead to the bottom layer becoming a form of sugared dust and you'd expect it to be super dry but it wasn't. We've decided a nice addition to the cake would be homemade cinnamon ice cream. I'll have to remember to try that next time I make it.