Custardy coconut jam is sandwiched between crunchy bread in kaya toast, a southeast Asian breakfast staple:
remembers her mother painstakingly squeezing milk from fresh coconuts and collecting eggs from the backyard chicken coop just to make a single batch. “It was such a treat,” says Lee, noting that store-bought versions weren’t common when she was growing up. “The [scent] of kaya lingered for the rest of the day.
For how many people share similar memories of the dish, part of the magic of kaya is that “there are many strains and many species of it,” says cookbook author and food writer. Many families like to add herbaceous pandan leaves, a tropical ingredient which infuses the kaya with a nutty scent, but they do it in different ways, dictated by regional variations and personal preferences.
The most straightforward way of enjoying the jam, though, is perhaps also the most common today. Kaya toast likely originated when immigrants from the Chinese island of Hainan who settled in Southeast Asia found work as cooks in British households, where they picked up culinary techniques like Western-style baking. Many went on to open kopitiams, or coffee shops, where they popularized kaya-topped bread as a tasty and convenient breakfast.
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