Sapin-Sapin (Layered Glutinous Rice Cake) Recipe

Or, delicious/beautiful. Whatever order you prefer, it still gets to my point. This Filipino kakainin both looks good, and tastes good!

Sapin-sapin is a Filipino word that literally translates to "layered". This beautiful kakanin is made of layered glutinious rice, mostly in purple, yellow, and white colors.

Intimidating

For someone like me who has never tried making it, it looked intimidating at first. First, it has been a long time since I last tried it. Maybe 15 years? I don't remember having it since I went to live and work overseas. So, I only have the faintest memory of the taste, even the texture of the dish.

Then! I saw my good friend @virgo27 shared a snap of the "sapin-sapin" her sister-in-law made and it inspired me to try and lookout how to prepare this Filipino food. Apparently, it is very easy to make, and the ingredients are also easy to find.

The Layers

As I mentioned above, this dish mainly has three layers - purple, yellow, and white.

These layers also have their own flavors -- purple yam (purple layer), jackfruit (yellow layer), and coconut (white layer).You can choose to make your own purple yam from scratch, but due to limited time and resources, I opted to just buy the bottled one. I pureed the jackfruit in syrup, and easily achieved the jackfruit flavor for the yellow layer. The white layer is simply the "unflavored" one.

The toppings are normally toasted coconut milk curd, which you can also make, if you have time. I used some toasted coconut shreds instead.

Now, let's make the dish, shall we?

What you will need:

• 1 1/2 cups glutinous rice flour
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 can (400 ml)coconut milk
• 1 can condensed milk
• 1/4 cup purple yam, mashed
• 1/4 cup jackfruit puree
• food coloring - purple & yellow

[Note: bottled jackfruit and purple yam are usually very sweet already, you may adjust the sugar and condensed milk according to your preference.]

The very simple procedure:

As I said, I never imagined such an intimidating looking kakanin to be ever so easy to make. (Well, it only gets a little challenging when you are trying to document every step for the blog/vlog! lol). Raise your hand if you feel the same!🙋

1. Mix together the glutinous rice flour and sugar in a bowl.
2. Slowly add the coconut milk and condensed milk, then mix thoroughly.
3. Strain the mixture to get rid of the lumps and achieve a smooth texture.
4. Divide the mixture into three separate bowls and prepare the flavors.
5. Add the mashed purple yam into one bowl and mix well. You can add purple yam extract to this batch. If you have purple food color, put this directly to the purple yam flavored mixture. If you're like me who do not have a purple food coloring, mix a small amount of blue and red food coloring in a small amount of the mixture until you get the right color, then mix it with the rest of the batch. Strain one more time.
6. Add the jackfruit puree to the other batch and add a yellow food coloring. Strain one more time to get rid of any lumps.

Steaming:

You can choose to use one big container to cook the sapin-sapin, or use small moulds, like what I did.

To achieve the layers, pour the purple flavored mixture into a greased mould, and steam for 10 minutes or until set.

Once the first layer is set, add the white or plain mixture for another 10 minutes. Do this for the last (yellow) layer.

Once done, let the sapin-sapin cool down and then transfer it to a plate. This is where I had a hard time -- the sapin-sapin was to sticky, it wouldn't loosen from the mould. LOL. I think I did not grease it sufficiently.

Hence, the slightly "scarred" heart-shaped sapin-sapin. That is why, in the photo above, I just scooped it straight out of the mould.

Nonetheless, I am still sooo happy with the outcome. I never thought of this dish to be super easy to make.

❤️Arlyn