by Penny Angeles-Tan | Feb 13, 2021 | Bon Appetit
I love tikoy. I say that every year and every year I mean it. I am the happiest gal in the block whenever my friends would send me tikoy on Chinese New Year. Over the years I have been receiving less and less … I’m lucky if I receive even one small one! The emotional side of me thinks that I must have fewer friends than I used to, which is possible since I have kept mostly to myself for almost a decade now. On the other hand, the logical side of me realizes that times are just hard and it has struck everyone, not just a few.
photo credit to interaksyon.com
If you go to the grocery or any Chinese store and check out what tikoy they have available you will probably see every color of the rainbow as they now make this in different flavors.
Affordability is subjective. If you have the cash to spare it is affordable, but if you live hand to mouth or paycheck to paycheck then it may be a luxury you will opt to forego. Or … hope that one of your Chinese friends would bless you with a tikoy.
My favorite is the brown tikoy, which is made with brown sugar.
How to make your own tikoy
It really isn’t difficult at all. You need three ingredients: sugar, water, and glutinous flour. By default, the tikoy will adapt the color of the sugar so if you use white sugar it comes out white. To mix it up you could add food color (which is what I did to make my tikoy red) or add flavor.
Tikoy recipe
Chinese New Year cake
Prep Time15 minutes mins
Cook Time1 hour hr
Course: Snack
Cuisine: Chinese
Keyword: Chinese cooking, sweet cake
pan
mixing bowl
whisk or spatula
steamer
- 2 1/4 cups water
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 3 c glutinous rice flour
Preparation
Combine the water and sugar in a pan. Turn on the heat and mix until the sugar is completely melted and you have a thin syrup. Set it aside and cool down to room temperature.
Sift the glutinous flour into a bowl. Add the syrup into the bowl a little at a time while mixing. Make sure there are no lumps.
Oil your baking pan/s well. Alternately, you can line your pan/s with wax paper as removing the cake from the pan when it is cooked is not always easy.
Pour in the batter a little over 3/4 of the way up.
Cooking
Prepare your steamer, make sure it is already steaming before putting the pans in.
Place the pans in the steamer and cook for an hour. If you have a cheesecloth you will want to cover the pans with it before putting the lid of the steamer so that no liquid will drop into the batter.
Resting
Remove the pan/s from the steamer and leave it out to rest and set. Don't get tempted to pry it off. It will shrink as it turns cooler. This will take around 2 hours.
Once you have removed the cake/s from the pan, put it in a container and chill in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours, longer is better. like overnight.
In the morning the tikoy will be ready to slice, fry, and serve. 🙂
The usual way of serving tikoy
The no-brainer way to serve tikoy is fried.
- Cut the tikoy into thin slices.
- Beat an egg in a bowl and dip each slice to coat before frying.
- Lightly oil a frying pan and fry each piece on both sides. You know the tikoy is ready when the center is soft and the egg coating is browned.
- Serve and enjoy.
by Penny Angeles-Tan | Apr 20, 2020 | Bon Appetit
Bibingkang malagkit or kumot as my dad used to call it is a rice cake snack that my dad used to love. We would buy a small tray of 8 squares every week. My dad called it kumot because of the layer if coco-caramel on top.
Is it also called biko?
Bibingkang malagkit is also called Biko. The only difference that I can see is that Biko is brown and is often topped with latik instead of coco-caramel sauce. To achieve that brown color, replace the white sugar with brown sugar.
The search is over
one serving size served here as a dessert with a cup of coffee on the side
Our favorite kakanin seller has not been around since the quarantine and when I ordered from someone on Facebook who makes bibingkang malagkit Facebook I was very disappointed at what I received … it was 10×10, as promised but the rice part was barely a centimeter high and the coco-caramel topping was about as thick. It was so thin that the only way to enjoy it was to roll a slice into a log and THEN eating it. It was a waste of money. Therefore, I decided to try making it myself.
I looked at several recipes online and chose the one I thought I could work with and yet I still made changes because I wanted it to look just like the one dad liked.
It took quite some time to make and requires a lot of patience but if you keep at it, you will be quite happy with the end result.
Time to cook!
Below is my version of the bibingkang malagkit. I was surprised that it turned out pretty well … exactly the same as the one dad and I used to buy. Yey! Today I had it for dessert with my breakfast.
FYI, I love using a wok for most of my cooking so for this recipe I still used two woks … a big one for the kakanin and a small one for the sauce topping.
Biko or Bibingkang Malagkit
rice cake made of glutinous rice, sugar, salt, and coconut milk
Course: Breakfast, Dessert, Snack
Cuisine: Filipino
Keyword: bibingka, biko, filipino, rice cake
Servings: 24
Author: Penny Angeles-Tan
big wok
small wok
baking dish
oven
- 1 tbsp. butter for coating the baking dish
Kakanin
- 4 cups malagkit rice also known as glutinous rice
- 1,000 ml. gata coconut milk
- 1.5 cups water
- 1.5 cups sugar white or brown
- 1/4 tsp fine sea salt
Topping
- 200 ml. gata coconut milk
- 1 cup dark brown sugar
Preparing the kakanin
Place the rice in a bowl then wash and drain it. Place enough water to cover and soak for a few hours ... one hour at the very least, overnight at most. Note, that the longer you soak it, the better the rice will cook later.
When you are ready to cook, drain the rice and set aside.
Place the coconut milk and water in a saucepot, set the heat to medium and simmer.
Add the drained rice and stir often to be sure the rice does not burn along the sides of the pot. Continue to cook over medium heat and mixing until the rice has soaked up most of the liquid. Using a large wok makes it easier to mix.
Reduce the heat and add the white sugar and salt to the rice mixture and mix. Make sure the sugar and salt are completely mixed into the rice. You will notice that the rice where the sugar gets mixed in becomes shinier so keep mixing gently. This will take around 10 to 15 minutes, more or less.
Taste the rice every now and then to make sure it is cooked all the way through. You know you are done when the rice mixture is sticky and clumps but separates from the pot easily.
Preparing the coco-caramel sauce topping
Place the remaining 200 ml. coconut milk and the dark brown sugar in a saucepan.
Turn on the stove and mix until completely mixed and the sugar is dissolved.
Turn off the stove and allow to cool for 2 to 5 minutes.
Putting the dish together
Time to bake
Heat your oven to 350F. Some say to preheat before you start cooking but, personally, I usually wait until I am actually going to bake because I cannot predict how long the preparation would take and it would be a waste of gas (or electricity).
Once it has reached 350F place the prepared tray in the oven and bake for 1 hour. The sauce topping will bubble and thicken.
Set aside and allow to cool before serving.
Once your dish has cooled it will look like this:
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