Bibingka Bites

Bibingka Bites is a popular street food and is made by baking the bibinga batter made with butter, sugar, eggs, rice flour, baking powder, coconut milk, evaporated milk and cubed cheddar cheese. Follow our recipe to enjoy these Bibingka Bites, a special treat piping hot even outside of the usual holidays in the comfort of your own home. While Bibingka is a snack usually seen outside churches especially on Simbang Gabi mornings, it’s piping hot rice batter placed on banana leaves, cooked over a hot charcoal heated by a clay ‘oven’ making the fresh cake’s aroma wafting over the streets ready to be bought and eaten right on the spot. Warming you and your friends and family up.

What is Bibingka?

Bibingka is a type of rice cake typically eaten in the Christmas season after Misa de Gallo a series or masses made in the morning beginning at the 16^thof December. Typically seen sold outside churches with other dishes like Puto bumbong another special Christmas treat. Bibingka is ypically made with ‘galapong’ or milled glutinous rice, coconut milk, evaporated milk, eggs, butter, sugar for sweetness, and baking powder to rise, all mixed together to create a smooth batter. Baked in the oven or traditionally Cooked on top of a clay oven using charcoal, which gives it a grilled and earthy taste. For a few minutes till you get a nice yellow or golden looking cake. This yields a light fluffy and buttery coconut goodness airy but filling cake. Topped with cheese, or salted egg, or sometimes sprinkled with grated coconut depending on the vendor selling it they may even make different flavors and topping to give it a twist to attract more people.

White homegrown Bibingka business making waves since the early 2000 or earlier. There was also a need to make interesting and creative bibingka recipes, from making different sizes like small bite sized cupcake like bibingka, large bibingkas, overloaded in toppings, and cake versions of the bibingka, adding flavorings and toppings like an egg, a salted duck egg, cheese, dried coconut shavings, chocolate, macapuno, ube, buko pandan, mocha, a combination of toppings and more. 

The rise of Bibingka bites

What exactly are bite-sized foods? In the dictionary these are ‘chunks or pieces of food that are small enough to fit in your mouth’, or ‘small enough to fit in the mouth to be consumed in one or two bites’. In the food world, some bite-sized foods are commonly seen as treats, rewarding treats eaten after a whole day of work, to make a leeway off after a workout, or generally gives you more control of the portion size you’d like to eat.

Inn some researches, smaller pieces of food are seen as more rewarding and give the person ‘the feeling of fullness than one large piece of food with equal energy values’. Some state that this may be because some food that appear bigger will make you want more or may think that you would need more, cutting portion sized pieces may help the brain think that you are eating more even if you’re eating less or even the same amount, which helps satiate hunger or the need to keep eating till your full or want to eat just to finish the dish and not waste it. Cutting up to portion-sized pieces also help in maintaining portion control and keep you maintaining a healthy diet. Portioning food helps keep you from eating more calories than you need to or plan to. Another reason for loving bite sized treats in that you can make a whole bath or items you can easily store and keep from wasting in the fridge easier, it also makes for a nice present or takeaway for family and friends.

Try out this Bibingka Bites recipe to enjoy at home, make for friends, or to relieve Christmas mornings to!

Bibingka bites recipe (tagalog)

Sahog

• ¼ tasa mantikilya (pinalambot)
• ¾ tasa puting asukal
• 2 itlog
• 2/3 tasa rice flour
• 2 kutsaritang baking powder
• 2/3 tasa coconut milk
• ¼ tasa evaporated milk
• 30 – 36 piraso hatihati na keso

Paano lutuin

1. Sa isang mangkok haluin anf mantikilya at asukal. Haluin ang mga itlog pagkatapos.
2. Idagdag ang rice flour at baking powder at haluin ng mabuti.
3. Ihalo ang coconut milk at evaporated milk, haluin hanggang makinis ang itsura ng batter.
4. Maghanada ng muffin o cupcake na pan o molde, ipahid ng mantikilya ang mga molde at lagyan ng batter, iwanan ng 1/3 na espasyo at lagyan ng mga keso.
5. Ibake ng 375°F o 175°C na preheated oben ng 15 o 21 na minuto.
6. Palamigin muna o ihanda na mainit init pa!