Day 299

Toasted Wheat Cake with Purple Yam & Crispy Young Rice: Today's new food is one of the several packaged items I found during my last trip to the Buford Highway Farmers Market. As you can probably tell by now, I bought a lot of stuff on that visit. I'm glad I don't have much further to go with this blog (only 66 days!), because it's getting really difficult to find new foods, even at the BHFM.

I've had these interesting "wheat cakes" stashed for the past week or so, and I've been eyeballing them ever since I bought them. Based on the packaging and description, I had no clue what they were going to taste like. Crispy young rice? Yeah, I didn't know what that meant, either. It's rare that I find something that offers no clues, so I decided to finally crack these open today to find out what they were.

Despite the packaging's lack of descriptive language, I searched the label for some much-needed info. These were a product of the Philippines, and I don't think I've bought anything from that region until now. Anyway, each piece was wrapped in various colors of cellophane - did that signify different flavors? The ingredient list was short: wheat flour, skim milk powder, cane sugar, ube powder (apparently also known as purple yam powder), pounded young rice, and butter. I figured they would be sweet, but past that, I had no idea.

Once I got one unwrapped, I was extremely surprised at the results. My first solid bite resulted in a fine powder in my mouth, almost like sweetened malted milk. After a few chews, it turned into a paste-like substance that was actually really tasty. If I had to compare it to anything, it reminded me of solidified malted milk. The "crispy rice" added a mild crunch, but I couldn't detect any purple yam flavor. As it turns out, all the pieces tasted the same - the different wrappers were only cosmetic.

Incidentally, the BHFM had these in several different flavors, which I'll be trying on my next shopping trip. I'm not sure how popular they are in the Philippines, but they're definitely now popular with me.