Layered Spice Cake (a.k.a Indonesian Layered Cake)

I'm still obsessed with spices! As a continuation of my holiday baking (with spices - lots and lots of spices),
the Indonesian Layer Cake seems to fit every bit of my criteria for festive baking. I've wanted to bake a layer cake from scratch, especially ever since coming across a post on it recently. The cake is rich, super moist, soft layers that you get to savour layer by layer and oh, the wonderful aroma of mixed spices when you take the cake out of the oven! Spice heaven! Wished we have smeller-net so you can smell it!
This is quite an expensive cake to make (20 egg yolks!) and the entire baking process is rather extensive. The cake is baked layer after layer with around 8 - 10 minutes per layer so imagine an 8" x 8" cake with 10 layers.....do the math and you'll see that the entire process can take up to 3 hours, including prep. time! Regardless, the result is worth every bit the effort. This isn't your typical oh-I-forgot-about-the baked goods-for the kids' school party tomorrow-but I can whip-it-up-under-an-hour deal. You've got to prepare yourself mentally how involved the process is and take your time to enjoy the baking, ladling on the batter, broil, wait, taking it out of the broiler, ladling on another layer, broil, wait......repeating that for at least 10 times. Yes, it's something that you have to enjoy. Just like I did.

Here's the recipe adapted from Amy Beh.

Ingredients
450g butter (4 sticks)
275g fine castor sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 tbsp brandy
20 egg yolks
10 egg whites
85g fine castor sugar
225g cake flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 1/2 tsp mixed spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, all-spice and cardamom)

Method
Line and grease the base of an 8"square loose-bottomed tin. Preheat oven to 400˚F.

Sift flour, baking powder and mixed spices into a bowl then divide into three equal portions.

Beat egg yolks until creamy with a hand-held electric mixer.

Cream butter, sugar and vanilla essence until light. Add brandy and continue to cream until fluffy. Blend in creamy egg yolk mixture slowly and gradually.

Fold in sifted dry ingredients in three batches, one-third portion at a time. Mix well with a metal spoon.

Whisk egg whites with sugar until stiff. Fold meringue into the creamed mixture until well-combined.

Spoon 4 tablespoons mixture into prepared tin and spread evenly. Bake in preheated oven for 10 minutes or till golden brown. Remove cake tin from oven and turn off the oven. Heat up the grill.

Brush each layer of the cake with a little melted butter. Use a skewer to prick the bubbles on the surface of the cake then press lightly with the flat bottom of a glass container. Continue in this manner until all the batter is used up.

Spoon 3 tablespoons of mixture over the first layer and spread evenly. Grill at 350˚F for 8 minutes or till brown. Repeat layer after layer till all the mixture is used up.

For the final layer, preheat oven at 300 °F and bake the entire cake for about 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Leave cake in tin for a while before turning out onto a wire rack to cool. Cut the cake only when it is completely cooled.