“I think that the process of has given me much more appreciation for everyone who’s done it before me,” she says. Accordingly, her recipe for polvoron is fit to be shared, yielding 80 colorful cookies ready for a dessert swap.īut for all her riffs on the classics, Balingit is mindful of all her sources of inspiration. In doing so, she made a new community for herself: Inspired by Bakers Against Racism, Balingit often shares treat boxes, the proceeds of which go to mutual aid efforts. “To cook Filipino food on my own, or even to bake, was something that I didn’t really tap into until there was no place to go.” Through baking, she could not only revisit comforting flavors and nostalgic desserts but also play around with them. “Before the pandemic, I feel like my relationship with Filipino food was very much going to restaurants,” she says. Those influences carry into her recipes: Her pichi-pichi, a chewy cassava-based Filipino dessert, is made with Mexican chamoy her chocolate chip cookies include apple cider vinegar, bay leaves, and pink peppercorns, evoking Filipino adobo her leche flan is topped with chai masala.īaking was Balingit’s entry point to Filipino food, catalyzed by the pandemic. In addition to her mom’s Filipino desserts, Balingit, who is a friend, grew up on treats from Mexican paleterías, Vietnamese restaurants, and the all-American snack aisle. Mayumu - which means “sweet” in Kapampangan, the Filipino language that Balingit’s family speaks - is the manifestation of Balingit’s Bay Area upbringing. And like everything in Mayumu, it’s not exactly traditional, but Balingit’s own playful version of something she loved growing up. In Balingit’s debut cookbook Mayumu: Filipino American Desserts Remixed, out on February 28 from HarperCollins, polvoron are particularly eye-catching delights, with crushed freeze-dried fruit adding an extra dose of color and flavor. Thanks to their Spanish origins, polvoron and polvorones can refer to a confusing array of confections: Mexican sugar cookies, Spanish almond-flecked shortbreads, the powdered sugar-covered nut balls sometimes known as “Russian tea cakes.” For Filipinos, polvoron doesn’t require nuts, just crumbly shortbread to which flavors like ube and coffee can be added. “I grew up eating a lot of Goldilocks polvoron,” says Balingit, referring to the Filipino bakery chain with locations in her home state of California. The yellow one, she recalls, meant classic polvoron, sweet, buttery, and flavored with just toasted flour and powdered milk. It gets its sweet, buttery melt-in-your-mouth nature from the unique combination of toasted flour, sugar, creamy butter, and powdered milk. Goldilocks Polvoron is a delicious Filipino baked shortbread.
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