GEBOGAN (BALINESE FRUIT & CAKE TOWER)

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.

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