Palitaw is a Filipino dessert made from a simple rice flour dough boiled and coated in coconut and sesame seeds. It can be enjoyed anytime and made with glutinous rice or premade flour. The texture can range from chewy to delicate, and it can be stuffed with ingredients.
Palitaw is a Filipino dessert and snack made with a simple rice flour dough that is boiled and then coated in coconut and sesame seeds. The small, flat rice cakes are traditionally eaten during the holiday season but can be enjoyed anytime. The texture of the finished cakes can range from very moist and delicate to chewy and chewy, depending on the cook’s preference. While there are some variations, palitaw is usually made to the same basic recipe without any modifications. It is similar to other types of sweet, baked rice cakes made in countries such as Japan and South Korea.
The rice used for palitaw is traditionally glutinous rice, also called sticky rice or malagkit in the Philippines. An authentic preparation involves breaking dried sticky rice and then soaking it in water. After soaking, it is ground into dough with water added as needed. If this method is used, the rice almost always requires soaking in water before being used, sometimes to soften the very thick shell around the rice and other times to remove some of the starch before cooking.
In many countries, instead of painstakingly grinding sticky rice into powder or dough, bags of ready-made glutinous rice flour are available for purchase. Premade flour is actually the preferred method of making palitaw at home. You don’t need to use sticky rice for the recipe, which means you can use plain rice flour without any ill effects.
The amount of water in the dough can help determine what the final texture will be. Using as little water as possible and forming a stiff dough will create a palitaw that is chewy, chewy, and thick. Adding extra water to create a looser dough will result in softer textured cakes.
Once the dough is the desired consistency, it is formed into balls which are flattened into discs. These disks are dropped into a pot of boiling water and left to cook for one to five minutes, depending on the density and ingredients of the cakes. The palitaw finishes cooking when the discs begin to rise to the surface of the water. At this point, they can be taken out of the water, dried on some towels and then dipped in sugar, toasted sesame seeds and shredded coconut. They are usually served cold.
Some palitaw may be stuffed with ingredients such as fruit or nuts or have sugar and sesame seeds integrated into the baking of the dough. These methods can cause difficulties for home cooks, however, as adding ingredients to the dough can cause it to crack during cooking. Palitaw can be frozen once completed for long-term storage.
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