Bebinca

A flavoursome vestige of Goa’s unique colonial culinary adventures, the Bebinca, also known as the Bibik, is a multi-layered sweetmeat lathered with clarified butter and cooked with egg yolks, coconut milk, flour, sugar, and nutmeg. This unique cake encapsulates Goa’s historic Indo-Portuguese exchanges and is a must on all occasions, earning it the sobriquet of ‘Queen of Goan Desserts’.

Legend has it that the Bebinca was invented by a Portuguese nun in the Santa Monica Convent of Old Goa in the 17th century. It was a common Portuguese practice back then to starch clothes using egg whites, leading to plenty of leftover egg yolks. Due to Goa’s traditional no-wastage approach in baking, one Portuguese nun named Bebiana decided to use the residue to create a cake that would symbolise the seven hills of Lisbon and the old city of Goa, leading to the dish having seven layers originally. When priests of St Augustine tried the pudding, they were delighted by its taste and unique approach and suggested more layers be added. As a result, the Bebinca is today made with as many as 16 layers and believed to be named in honour of its inventor.

The Bebinca is traditionally served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, which nicely compliments the warmth locked in each beautiful layer of the cake. The dish is conventionally prepared in a special earthenware oven called Tizal. Moreover, for best results, the dish is cooked by placing burning coconut husks on the top rather than heating the ingredients from the bottom. This allows equal heat dissipation and slow caramelisation of the layers, leading to a smoky undertone and supremely moist interior. The most crucial ingredient for the dish, however, is patience. It can take as long as 12 hours to prepare the dish as each layer of batter needs to be painstakingly lathered and baked separately.

The Bebinca is special in that it incorporates a flavour gradient that is unlikely to be found anywhere else. In fact, this is the reason why the Portuguese carried the recipe with them across their colonies, leading to the Bebinca’s popularity in Sri Lanka, East Africa, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Hawaii, and the Pacific. In every colony, the dish was adopted with local adaptations leading to newer variations, like the un-layered Bibingka in the Philippines or the Bibikkan in Sri Lanka. Such is the craze involving this delightful dessert that Bebinca is sometimes used to create other un-layered pastries like Bebinca de Claras.