As a dessert for my Filipino meal last week I attempted to make some bibingka (coconut sponge cakes). Now, the recipe I was using suggested cooking the cakes in banana leaves. I did attempt to find some but to no avail, so I adapted the recipe to use some little tart cases I had instead. What I didn’t quite realise was how big these coconut cakes were probably supposed to be so I ended up with a few small bibingka and then used the rest of the cake batter in a savarin cake tin. This was the first time I have baked anything with rice flour and coconut milk – usually coconut milk just ends up in curries. So, already this challenge for the year is teaching me to do different things with ingredients.
Ingredients
- 3 eggs, beaten
- 1 cup light brown sugar
- 2 cups rice flour
- 3 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
- one can coconut milk (400ml)
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- 2 tbsp dessicated coconut (grated fresh coconut if you have it)
Method
- Preheat the oven to 160°C.
- In a large bowl mix together the eggs, brown sugar, rice flour, melted butter, coconut milk and baking powder. Make sure it is mixed thoroughly.
- If you do manage to find a banana leaf then line a small-ish cake tin with the leaf (around 10cm diameter and 5cm deep) and pour in the batter. Or if you decide to use smaller tins/tart cases/any tin you have, make sure it has been lightly greased with butter. Pour the batter into your cake tin/s of choice.
- If baking in a large cake tin as one cake, bake for around 1 hour or until brown lightly on top. If using smaller tins bake for about 30 minutes until lightly browned.
- Sprinkle coconut on top of the cakes. Many recipes will brush the cakes with melted butter before sprinkling coconut but I decided not to in this case.
- If possible serve warm.
That concludes my cooking inspiration from the Philippines for now.
A Geographer's Kitchen 