Bibingka

Delicious Bibingka you can easily make at home! Topped with salted eggs, cheese, and grated coconut, this classic Filipino rice cake is the ultimate Christmas treat!

Since the BER months are here and the holiday season has officially started, I thought I'd update my bibingka post with new photos and cooking tips. Nothing says Filipino Christmas better than this Filipino native cake, right? Except, maybe, the festive cathedral window gelatin or layered crema de fruta cake.

I spent part of this week testing various recipes and trying to develop a traditional version made from galapong. However, after going through enough rice grains to feed a nation in my experiments, I realized the easiest way to make bibingka at home is to use rice flour.

Forget soaking and grinding! Buy a bag of rice flour at the grocery store, and your favorite Filipino treat will be a matter of stirring the ingredients into a batter and quickly popping the mixture in the oven to bake!

What is Bibingka

Bibingka is a classic Filipino delicacy that's especially popular during Christmas. Sold outside churches during the nine-day Misa de Gallo, it's commonly enjoyed after the mass as breakfast or as a midday snack with a cup of hot chocolate or salabat.

Similar to putong bigas, traditional bibingka is made with galapong. Rice grains are soaked in water overnight to ferment and soften and then ground using stone mills into a thick paste.

The resulting rice dough is combined with water or coconut milk to form a batter and baked in a banana-lined terra cotta pot until set and nicely charred. These specialized clay pots function like an oven, using hot coals positioned on top and bottom as heat sources.

The Ilocos region has its version called Royal Bibingka. It's made with glutinous rice flour, coconut milk, eggs, and cheese, giving it a soft and chewy texture similar to mochi.

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Ingredient notes

• The batter uses a mix of rice and glutinous rice flour for quick and easy preparation.
• You can add a drop or two of yellow food coloring to the batter to deepen the color.
• The rice cakes, in their basic form, are a simple mixture of galapong and water, but we're making them extra special with coconut milk, beaten eggs, sliced salted duck eggs, and cheese.
• I like to add sliced cream cheese as a topping. You can substitute kesong puto, queso de bola, or sharp cheddar cheese.

Equipment needed

• Banana leaves keep the rice cake from sticking and add an incredible aroma. Inspect the leaves to ensure they're intact and free of rips, then pass them quickly over a gas flame until soft and pliable. You can line the tins with parchment paper if you can't find banana leaves.
• I use mamon tin molds I bought in the Philippines, but large muffin tins or fluted pie pans will also work.

Resting the batter

I came to this method by happenstance. I was retesting the recipe for the hundredth time last weekend, but since it was late in the night and I was too sleepy to finish baking the whole batter, I refrigerated the remainder with plans to bake it the next day. The batter thickened quite nicely overnight, and the resulting rice cakes were softer and fluffier!

I discovered that resting the batter improves baked goods. It allows the flour to hydrate and the starch grains to swell, giving the liquid time to soften the flour and the gluten to relax. A good rest also helps distribute the leavening agent evenly for a more tender crumb.

You can cook the bibingka immediately, but if you have time, I suggest letting the batter chill for the best results. Note that it gets thicker the longer it sits.

Serving suggestions

These Filipino rice cakes are usually eaten hot or warm, with margarine spread on top and a generous sprinkling of grated coconut. Enjoy them with a cup of tsokolate de batirol or salabat for a Christmas treat!