November 2011 Daring Bakers' Challenge - Filipino Desserts!

I'm on a roll! I've completed two Daring Bakers' Challenges in a row!! October's challenge was to make Povitica and it was a great success.  This month was equally successful! Catherine of Munchie Musings was our November Daring Bakers' host and she challenged us to make a traditional Filipino dessert - the delicious Sans Rival cake! And for those of us who wanted to try an additional Filipino dessert (not me unfortunately - ran out of time!!), Catherine also gave us a bonus recipe for Bibingka which comes from her friend Jun of Jun-Blog.

 This was probably the quickest and easiest DB challenge I've participated in since I started the club back in August of 2010. While being quite easy and not really containing any new techniques, the end result was absolutely delicious and I got to experience a desert from a different culture that I've never had the privilege of tasting. This is something that is easily achievable in an evening (I started at 8pm and finished by 10:30) and uses pretty basic ingredients.

The recipe has two main components: baked meringue layers (four of them), and french buttercream. Both recipes can be found on the Daring Kitchen website.  I'm not going to reproduce it here. I omitted the cocoa powder in the meringue and flavoured the buttercream with vanilla extract. If I was going to make this recipe again (which I think I will!!), I would bake the meringue layers longer to crisp them up a little bit more, but either way, this dessert was delish. Even hubby enjoyed it thoroughly!

 Hope you enjoy the pics!! I certainly had a great evening making this last night and I wasn't exhausted by the time I was finished, so that is always a nice thing. :)

 Thanks Catherine for a wonderful challenge! I love the creativity of this challenge and the lovely flavours. I have just one regret: that I didn't have time to try both dessert recipes!! Eventually I will get around to it. :)

Happy Baking my Friends!