Filipino "Candy"

Growing up in Hawaii, I was introduced to foods from many different cultures.  There was Portuguese bean soup, sausage, breads, Chinese saimin (noodles) and manapua (char siu bau), Korean kim chee and kalbi, Japanese sushi and everything else my mother made, Filipino chicken adobo, lumpia and something my brother and I loved when we were kids... kankanen.  One of my Filipino friends said kankanen just means candy.  I've also seen it referred to as biko.

You can sometimes find kankanen at farmers markets.  Often times it's wrapped in banana leaves.  I e-mailed my classmate, Helen who now lives in New Mexico and she gave me this recipe:

Cook 5 cups sweet rice (sometimes called mochi rice) in a rice cooker.  When cooked and cooled, mix with 1 pound of brown sugar and 1 can of coconut.  Then bake at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes.

Five cups of rice is a lot and Helen advised me to check online.  I learned that the basic ingredients are sweet rice, brown sugar and coconut milk, but there were tons of variations.  Some people got really fancy and used fresh coconut milk and even grated coconut.

I opted to modify some recipes and went with this:
Two and a half cups sweet rice cooked in the rice cooker
2 cups water
2 cups brown sugar
4 cups coconut milk (I didn't measure.  I just used two cans.)
1/2 tsp. salt.

 

I mixed the brown sugar, salt and coconut milk together and stirred constantly until it thickened.  Then I added the cooled cooked rice and stirred on low heat until much of the liquid was gone.

Technically, this should be wrapped in banana leaves, but I'm going to forgo asking my neighbor for leaves from his banana tree.

As for taste?  Well, we tried it with mixed reviews.  Mom thought it was too sweet.  Art thought the consistency wasn't quite the same.  And I'm thinking this sounds like my quest for the perfect elementary school shortbread cookies. Nothing seems quite as good as when we were kids.