#215_Bibingka

For the love of Bibingka....

In the Philippines this type of bibingka (rice cake) is made and sold along the road sides specially at night. It is baked in makeshift ovens with embers from dried coconut shells with husks still intack. The embers are placed on top and at the bottom of a clay pan with the bibingka batter in it.

Just visualize a clay pan containing bibingka batter sandwiched between 2 burners! That's best way I can describe this method of baking the bibingka to somebody who hasn't been to the country and haven't seen it done.

I really wanted to make my bibingka that way, but I know it is impossible unless maybe I'd do it in a camp ground and would use charcoals.

What I'm going to post here is not a recipe but rather the method by which I baked the bibingka. Out of desperation, I came up with the following idea, and of course done indoor.

In an attempt to make an authentic bibingka just like the way they make it over there, I turned to this portable 5th burner ( electric burner) to use as the top embers. Am I being creative or insane?

First of all, I bought some terra cotta planter saucers, lined them with banana leaves, then ladled some bibingka batter into them. Talk about authenticity!

I placed the clay pan right on top of the stove (that's supposed to be red, not purple, bytheway). I then placed a tin pan over the clay pan containing bibingka batter....

.... then placed the "5th burner" upside down onto the tin pan, so the burner was sitting right on the tin pan.

Ten minutes later.....

Voila!! bibingka!!!

Although the bibingka might look good and authentic enough, unfortunately, I wasn't satisfied with the texture. I'm not too sure if this was due to the method I used or the recipe, whatever the case was, I will be doing some more experiments on this matter.