Watch: Filipino Birthday Tradition Sees Peppi Azzopardi Pull String Of €5 Notes Out Of Chocolate Cake
Peppi Azzopardi wasn’t expecting anything special when his door rang – but one Filipino woman he had helped out years ago had been waiting to give him a special, traditional gift.
“Today is my birthday, and for my birthday I had a surprise,” the popular Xarabank host said in a new video.
Explaining that a friend of his, named Richelle, who he had helped out in the past was behind the door, quickly handed him a birthday cake – and told him to start pulling at the top.
The next thing Peppi knew, he was pulling out a seemingly endless string of €5 notes attached to each other, to his and his partner Mandy’s surprise.
Called a ‘Money Cake’, the tradition typically sees a hole or compartment made in the centre of a birthday cake, and a roll of notes – one note representing each year of the person’s life – hidden right under the surface.
Peppi reacts with a big smile, as Mandy jokes: “you never made me a cake like that.”
“The money just didn’t want to stop coming out,” Peppi laughs.
Richelle said she wanted to give the Money Cake to Peppi because: “you helped me, and I want to give back,” saying he could give the money to people in need if he wanted.
Peppi has been a consistent public Maltese voice calling for a more humane approach to third-country nationals trying to find a new life in Malta, something he’s been both praised and criticised for from different parts of the island.
But it seems third-country nationals remember what he’s done for them, and are now ready to return the favour.
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