Did you ever see these fruit
& cake tower in a Balinese Ceremony?
Those fruit & cake tower are called Gebogan. Gebogan is a symbolize of the
gratitude to the God for the infinite blessing. It is made for offerings to the
Deities and ancestral spirits for all the grace and fertility, which has been
given to the humans. Gebogan is consist of
fruits and traditional cake. Which are arranged neatly in a special pan,
to form the composition of fruits and traditional cake that make up the tower
with high artistic taste, thus forming a beautiful and attractive offerings.
The Balinese have a high artistic taste, every activity and life is always
added an element of art, with the aim that life becomes more beautiful and
colorful. That is why when they make the gebogan, they always made it very
attractive and beautiful.
Gebogan can be very tall and
in some ceremonies reach up to more than one and a half metres. Balinese women
carry the gebogan to the temples on their heads. Women very suitable to bring these offerings. Therefore, a
woman has a heart that is soft and quiet. Because when they are carrying the
gebogan to the temple, sometimes the temple is located quite far, they should
be have a good balance and poise, thus the gebogan not to fall.
Traditional
cake that is used to make a gebogan are usually made by their own. Because
making traditional cake is usually done by women in Bali. If
you would like to make a fruit tower, whether as a table centerpiece or as your
own form of gratitude, you will need a Dulang (Offering bowl made from wood or
metal with an iron stick in the middle), a banana trunk on the dulang, you can
insert bamboo sticks into the fruit and then into the trunk, then arrange
flowers or ribbons at the top of tower. You can buy a dulang in local gift
shops or traditional Balinese markets. Fresh oranges, crisp red apples and also delicious traditional cake arranged
on a silver dulang would be a very nice. The cost to make a gebogan is depending on how high is the gebogan.
Higher gebogan means more fruits and traditional cake are needed.
Nowadays,
the Balinese preferred to use imported fruit for the gebogan. Because the
imported fruit has a consistent shape and color, and it will makes a gebogan
looks better. As well as the price of imported fruit is cheaper than the local
fruit. It is also happen on the traditional cake, sometimes they changed it by
a modern cake to
gain time efficiency.
Risata Bali Resort & Spa
