For as long as I can remember, I have always celebrated Good Friday with a plate full of Biko for lunch and dinner. Most Filipinos, or Cebuanos specifically, prepare Binignit as the only food to eat on Good Friday. Cooking Binignit is a family event. It's hard to prepare what it is exactly - first, it's sweet, second, it's a mixture of many different things!!
Many different things like coconut milk, coconut cream, glutinous rice, taro, sweet potato, purple yam, plantain bananas, tapioca pearls, jackfruit, and palm flour jelly balls. Have I missed out anything?! There are so many things that I don't even know anymore!
Anyways, I've never really liked Binignit. Not my thing. My mom, the amazing mom that she is, never forced me to eat it. Instead, she would make Biko just for me.
Biko is a Filipino dessert made of glutinous rice, coconut milk, and muscovado sugar and it absolutely delicious!
Thankfully, we can find Muscovado Sugar here in Metz, France. This is one of the few Filipino products I can find here. And I can only find it in specialised organic stores!
Biko
Ingredients:
2 cups of glutinous rice
2 cups of water
1 560-ml can of coconut milk
1 1/2 cup of muscovado sugar (adjust according to your taste)
First, prepare your ingredients.
There's a little carton of coconut cream in the picture because I wanted to make some "latik", but failed.
Cook the rice in the water. I like to use the rice cooker.
In the meantime, heat the coconut milk in a wok. Add the muscovado sugar and stir continuously.
Stir well until you get a nice brown caramel color. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat.
Set aside a ladle full.
As soon as the rice is cooked, transfer it to the wok. Mix well with caramel mixture. Turn off the heat.
Transfer to a lined baking dish.
Cover the top with the caramel that was set aside earlier. Spread evenly.
Bake in a 180 degrees Celsius preheated oven for 40-45 minutes.
Enjoy warm or cool. We, personally, love it the next day. 😊