Bake with Patsitivity #6: These ain't dragon balls

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I’m about to tell you that I’m back for another recipe but I know what you’re thinking! That Patsitivity's eating a lot these days! 😂😂😂 Well, you’re partly wrong and partly right! Whatever that means, it’s for you to figure out.

Seriously tho, since my spine injury recurred. I’ve been having more time than usual. On weekends, I’d hit the kitchen like it was my gym in the meantime I couldn't do as many physical activities as before. Although I know with or without an injury, I’d still be sparing a weekend to cook and bake, what matters is that all the recipes I’ve tried for the very first time are successful and palatable. Yay! I'm just good at following instructions!😁

Today, I’ll share something that other regions of the world might find weird.

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Bread is as staple as rice

I'm not sure if the heading's true to all households in my city but at least at home and in my workplace, this holds true. A day is never complete without eating bread perfect with a cup of coffee or hot chocolate or milk mostly for breakfast. Today, we'll bake or cook (because we aren't using an oven for this) binangkal.

Binangkal is a staple bread variant in my country. I’ve read on the internet that it’s mostly popular in Visayas and Mindanao^[1]. Where did it originate from? I certainly don’t have an idea; if this proves a point tho that’s perhaps people have always been creative that such a bread type exists.

In simpler terms, binangkal is a dense dough ball coated with sesame seed. Some would claim that it's a type of doughnut; perhaps because most of the ingredients are the same. But really, it's a different bread with a unique characteristics of its own. What are those? Find out in a while!

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What’s simpler than this bread's ingredients?

If there’s one thing I love about this recipe is that it’s very simple. I didn’t have to worry about hopping from one grocery to another or one baking supplies retailer to another because the ingredients are readily available at home (except for one, sesame seeds but the usual grocery I went to had this; no need to worry at all). I’ve had experiences wherein I’d been going to 3-4 groceries/stores just to look for a single ingredient. That’s what happened when I cooked Pad Thai.

For this recipe, you'll need the following:

• 2 ¾ cup all-purpose flour
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1 cup brown sugar
• ½ tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 tbsp cooking oil
• 2/3 cup evaporated milk or (10 tbsp+2tsp =2/3 cup)
• 1 egg 1 tsp vanilla
• ¾ cup sesame seeds
• 1L cooking oil for deep frying

All-purpose flour	Eggs
Brown Sugar	Sesame Seed
Evaporated Milk	Uncooked dough balls

Follow these steps and you'll end up with the best binangkal:

1. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, combine flour, salt, brown sugar, baking soda and baking powder.
2. In a separate mixing bowl, mix together the wet ingredients, namely: evaporated milk, egg, cooking oil, vanilla. Do not overmix.
3. Add the dry ingredients into the mixing bowl containing the wet ingredients. Ensure that you mix well. Expect ending up with a thick dough.
4. Time to form the balls! It’s up to you how you’d like your binangkals big or small, although there’s a standard based on what’s sold in bakeries. You can always experiment at home, right? But take note that bigger dough balls will take more time to cook, so if you’re like me whose niece and nephew were so excited to eat, you better make smaller dough balls.
5. The dough balls will be rolled into a plate with sesame seeds. Make sure the balls will be covered entirely. Do step 4 and 5 until all dough have been turned into small dough balls.
6. Bring to boil the oil in a pot or pan deep enough for deep frying. If you have deep fryers at home, make use of them. Deep fry the sesame balls until golden brown. Take note that to achieve the perfect cracks in your binangkals keep the fire low. You’ll notice that cracks will slowly show up. If you don’t see any, you might have done something wrong along the way. With or without the binangkals, you could still eat them but as much as possible, we’d want to achieve the crack effects on the bread’s surface as this is the defining characteristic of this bread.
7. Drain cooked binangkals in paper towels to get rid of the excess oils.
8. Best serve for afternoon snacks. You can pair with refreshing juice or coffee or any drink of your choice.

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I hope you enjoyed this recipe! Let me know if you've created them at home. Here are my final output for this recipe:

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