Bebinca: a multi-layered cake from India

New Delhi, India

Created by a resourceful nun in 17th-Century Goa, this sticky, seven-layer cake is made primarily from eggs, coconut, sugar, ghee, and flour.

“An excess of egg yolks led to the creation of bebinca,” said Gracian de Souza, a chef and restaurant consultant from India’s western state of Goa. “And in today’s parlance, we can call it a perfect example of zero-waste cooking.”

Bebinca is a multi-layered cake that has been dubbed the “queen of Goan desserts” and is considered such an inherent part of Goa’s culinary identity that the state administration is pushing for a Geographical Indication (GI) tag for the caramelised confection.

De Souza recounted a popular story about bebinca. It goes that in 17th-Century Goa, when the coastal state was under Portuguese rule, nuns in convents used egg whites to bleach their habits. That left them with plenty of egg yolks. In an innovative – and sustainable – twist, Sister Bebiana, a nun at the Convento da Santa Monica in Old Goa, crafted a sticky cake using the leftover yolks and coconut milk, a readily available ingredient in the coastal belt.

Historian Fatima da Silva Gracias, who specialises in Indo-Portuguese history, endorses this theory in her book Cozinha de Goa: History and Tradition of Goan Food. She writes that Sister Bebiana might have experimented with the Portuguese tradition of making layered desserts, which are not traditionally found in India. Sister Bebiana’s initial version was a seven-layered cake. When it was sent to the priests of Convent of St Augustine, the Order to which Santa Monica belonged, they found it too small and advised her to increase the layers to at least a dozen.

Made with a few simple ingredients – egg yolks, flour, coconut milk, sugar and ghee (clarified butter) with a dash of nutmeg powder to add an aromatic note – the dessert was named bebinca, after its creator Bebiana. While the priests suggested the cake have at least 12 layers, the minimum number of layers of a bebinca remains at seven, and it can have as many as 16.

De Souza is passionate about bibik, a doting name Goans have for their distinctive delicacy. “During my school days, it was a treat that I looked forward to whenever I visited our ancestral home in North Goa and it remains the star of the culinary spread during Christmas, Easter and family weddings,” he said.

As a consultant chef, De Souza has crafted bebinca for collaborative pop-ups. However, it has not made it onto the menus at the restaurants he has headed in Goa, Mumbai and London, though Goan influences have always been markedly present in his culinary repertoire.

Traditionally, bebinca is made in tizals – locally made earthenware pots – in which heat comes from the top. Slow burning coconut husks are positioned atop the lids of the pots, a process that imparts the complex smoky flavours with which the dessert is associated. “The trick is possible even when you bake bebinca with an OTG [oven-toaster-griller],” De Souza explained. “Turn the heat source on top when you are pre-heating the oven.”

For De Souza, bebinca represents the joie de vivre of India’s sunshine state. “A weekend project of preparing this decadent dessert can be the ideal opportunity for a family gathering. Laughter, banter, and gossip are the perfect accompaniments to the fun baking session, which almost always happens in the backyards of the ancestral Goan homes. It is a legacy that is deeply connected with the spirit of Goa.”

Source: BBC News