Rum Cake by Classic Confections
I was at the Art in the Park event at the Salcedo Market last Saturday and purchased some photographs from our favorite photo gallery, Silverlens, and the proprietor asked me 
if I had had any of Baba Ibazeta’s baked goods which shared a table with Tommy’s Coffee. I had not. I featured Tommy’s Coffee and his then table partner Biscotteria Manila soon after I started this blog. And every once in a while, Tommy still comes up to me to tell me that some buyer from California or some local restaurant/cafe contacted him to buy coffee as a result of that early post! But I didn’t realize that the baked goods beside his coffee are now supplied by someone else. At any rate, they had a pretty appealing looking rum cake on display so I bought a slice to try at home. I also took home some apple walnut muffins and banana raisin ones as well…
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swamped at the office (who says I am retired???)… After the humongous platters of 
eyeball that many of my readers are significantly younger than I am, and I suspect a cocktail party in their snazzy new flat is more their speed than the sit-down dinners with several courses that I tend to do at this stage of my life. Geez, I haven’t lived in a studio apartment for nearly 15 years! At any rate, in those days, vodka was my drink of choice and folks sometimes kept the bottle in the freezer to ensure that it was ice cold, the best way to drink it neat. I am not sure if vodka is still a preferred drink for cocktails these days (is it tequila, rum, scotch, bourbon, single malts?) but here is a cheap, easy and impressive trick you might consider for your next cocktail party…
and I would eat it in almost any of the forms it is made - little round balls with salt and sugar, free-form shapes around the seeds, seedless, with the webbing (not shell) still surrounding the entire ripe fruit, with chilies and without, etc. So when some friends sent over this pack of preserved sampalok from a recent trip of theirs to Thailand, I was thrilled. By the way, this is a nice side effect of writing about food for Marketmanila, friends now increasingly send over interesting or delicious things to eat…talk about making a diet impossible… I saved this package of sampaloc (is it c or k?) for a few days and took it out to the beach…
and have searched for the right noodles for months in Manila, to no avail. But in Cebu, the noodles are everywhere and in several varieties ranging from these narrow diameter noodles, sold in tiny packs that are perhaps the smallest portion of noodle I have ever seen sold… I am not sure where the name comes from but I would have to guess it must somehow be related to UDON of the thick Japanese noodles…if not, and you have a credible explanation for the origin of the name, please leave me a comment. This is economical, delicious and satisfying comfort food at its best. Super easy to make, fills the tummy and leaves a taste imprint that many Visayans apparently carry to their graves…
spice of the crabs were meant to be tempered by the coolness and sweetness of the coconut milk, squash and ginger. I arranged a portion of the dish in a hallowed out half coconut shell, up top, for photo reasons only, or if I owned a restaurant that needed that bizarre height that fancy shmancy places are wont to do. The recipe is really easy to do and a real crowd pleaser.