Traditional religious ceremony in Bali can never be apart from rice products as offerings. Those can be anything that has been cooked. Two rice products that is a must for Balinese in every traditional ceremony is traditional cakes named Uli and Begina.

Uli and Begina are made of sticky rice known as ketan in Bali. Unlike Uli that has smoother structure, Begina is formed by many full grains of sticky rice. There are sweet and salty Uli and Begina.

Though Uli and Begina are both made of sticky rice but the process of making these cakes are different. For Uli, you have to crush the steamed sticky rice, and mix it with grated coconut which has the same amount with the amount of sticky rice. Palm sugar (brown) sugar will be added into it if you want to make the sweet one. Then it is dried but before that Uli have to be sliced as thin as possible. If the sun is blazing hot it takes only a day to dry the Uli. However, most people nowadays like to eat it without frying or drying it. The fried Uli nowadays, are mostly use as offering rather than for the purpose of consumption.

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Brem, sweet rice wine that is usually found in traditional markets or roadside stalls large Bintang beer bottles is one of three popular Balinese liquors – other are arak, and tuak. Like arak and tuak, brem is in addition of being a beverage, a necessity for matabuh (offering liquid for bhuta kala, evil spirit, demon, etc) in almost all religious ceremonies. Very large quantities of it are made and used for that purpose. This is usually low grade, homemade brem, and it is often mixed with water. It is a pat of custom in some areas in Bali to bring a bottle of brem or two as a present for the family that hold a religious ceremony or as an offering in a temple anniversary.

Brem is made from glutinous or “sticky” white rice, known as ketan in Balinese, and a smaller amount of Indonesian black rice, called injin in bali. Both ketan and injin are less commonly used in cooking than common white rice, baas. The sticky ketan is made into various Balinese traditional cookies for offering and other religious purpose. The black injin, is made into delicious traditional dessert (jaja injin) by cooking and serving with brown palm sugar and coconut milk. Since injin is rather expensive, only enough is used in brem to impart the desired final color.

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