I suddenly had a craving for a kakanin yesterday, I thought of making biko, but changed my mind. I thought I would make maja blanca. Maja blanca is a white coconut milk cake topped with either latik or budbud, it’s been a while since I’ve had this and I’ve never tried making it myself.

I searched for a good maja blanca recipe online and settled for a simple one (from Filipina soul) that was adapted from the book of Reynaldo Alejandro. I followed it to the letter except for the toasting of grated coconut (I inserted a note in the recipe), I don’t want to crank up my oven just for it.

You may use fresh or canned coconut milk. Dilute canned coconut milk with water to make 2 cups if you want a lighter coconut taste. If you want to use fresh coconut, I’ve detailed how to extract coconut milk here .

Maja Blanca
adapted from the Philippine Cookbook

1/2 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
2 cups coconut milk
3 cups grated coconut

Mix cornstarch and sugar in a bowl. Add water and stir. In a saucepan, bring coconut milk to a boil and gradually stir in cornstarch mixture. Boil for 5 minutes, until the starch is cooked. Pour into a buttered cake pan (or any bowl with smooth sides) and let cool. Spread coconut on a baking sheet and toast at 350F until brown. Sprinkle cake when it is ready to serve with toasted grated coconut.

Olive’s note: For this recipe, I extracted a cup of kakang gata (coconut cream) I used this for latik and extracted 2 more cups for the maja.

For toasting coconut: Heat a non-stick pan over medium high heat, add dessicated coconut, lower heat to medium , Stir constantly (it’s good for your arms) until the coconut turns golden/amber in color. Turn off the heat and sprinkle on top of maja blanca.

Enjoy!

Olive

You may also want to see these:

• Re-post: Sweet Sticky Rice with Topping ( Bibingkang Kanin) Mon 21 Mar 2011
• KCC: Suman sa Lihia Sat 16 Oct 2010
• Pichi-Pichi Fri 18 Sep 2009
• Cassava Cake (Cassava Bibingka) Tue 25 Aug 2009