Let's cook BIKO

BIKO is a sweet rice cake very common in Philippines. It is usually made of glutinous rice, coconut milk and brown sugar. It can be served as merienda, desserts and best paired with coffee.

It's an evening before my birthday when my husband decided to cook Biko. We will offer this food to our church mates who will do serenading early in the morning as our usual practice within our church community.

We went to the nearest market and we buy the ingredients needed.

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INGREDIENTS

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2kg glutinous rice
4pieces coconut
1kg brown sugar
1/4kg muscovado (optional)
Water for cooking rice

Muscovado is a type of partially refined to unrefined sugar with a strong molasses content. Its color is dark brown. We used this because we want a more dark colored Biko.

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PROCEDURES

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We have two available matured coconut at home so we just bought two coconut in the market and let them grate it.

Step 1. My husband remove the outer part of the coconut and our son always wanted to help and participate our cooking activity and he volunteered to removed the outer part of the coconut.

Step 2. My husband grates the two mature coconut.

Step 3. While my husband is grating the coconut, I cooked the glutinous rice. Wash it first and make sure to remove all excess water. Put water just equal to the number of cups of our glutinous rice. For example, you have 10 cups of glutinous rice, just put 10 cups of water too. You can also have lesser of you think there are lots of excess water after washing the rice.

Note: More or excess water will make your glutinous rice turn into a semi rice porridge or the rice will become so soft.

Step 4. When my husband done the grating, I squeeze the grated coconut to extract the pure coconut milk.

Note: Don't put water in the grated coconut so we will get only the pure coconut milk.

Step 5. While I am preparing the coconut milk, my husband made fire and put the big pan on it. Let it dry and then put the pure coconut milk in the pan.

Stir the coconut milk continously to avoid burning or sticking in the pan until the coconut releases it natural oil and the coconut solid which we call latik will separate from the oil.

Latik is also called in English as coconut curd or coconut caramel. When you see it as golden brown, remove it on fire to avoid burning and make it's taste bitter.

Set it aside because we will use this as our toppings later.

Step 6. My husband is about to put the brown sugar and the muscovado at the pan when I asked it first for a picture, lol. That's the brown sugar and muscovado we used. When you will cook Biko, choose dark brown sugar so your Biko will looks color brown too. The color of your Biko will depend on the sugar you used. Muscovado also adds the very color brown in our Biko.

Put the brown sugar and muscovado to the pan with the coconut oil. Stir it continuously to avoid it from burning. Mix it very well.

Step 7. When the coconut oil, brown sugar and muscovado mixture boils, we then need to put the rice. Here the one who cook really needs some help.

I assisted him by putting the rice continuously while he mix the rice and other mixture continuously to avoid it from burning.

This is the most tiring part of cooking Biko from stirring the coconut milk until mixing the rice, coconut oil, sugar and muscovado mixture because you really need to mix it continuously to avoid burning.

If you are cooking it in a burner, control the fire from low to medium heat. We are cooking it using a firewood and we had a hard time controlling the fire, lol.

Just mix it continuesly until all sugar dissolves and mix thoroughly with the glutinous rice. Remove it on fire and your Biko is done.

Step 8. Put it on the food container and put the latik as toppings.

Your Biko is now ready to be served.

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Honestly, there are different ways of cooking Biko but for me this one is the best. This is the special way of cooking it. It is so tiring yet the result is satisfying. Cooking this way will make your Biko last more than a day even without refrigerator.

Have you tried this Biko already? What you can say?

Do you cooked Biko in different way? Share what's the difference? Let's share different ideas and tips on cooking it.

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Thank you so much for reading and I am so happy I was able to write this down after more than a month, lol. We cooked this last August 13 in the evening but just today that I was able to write it down in a blog. I hope you learn a lot and can cook Biko in the future.

Here's a slice of Biko for you 😄. Have a great day.