Pastry and travel

When you travel, one of the things you will always try to look for, in my case anyway, is the best baked stuff in the area. This has always been the norm when it comes to going away to new places, and this happens whether you go there by boat, by plane, by car, by bus, or whatnot. I don’t know why, but every time we find ourselves in a new place, we always ask about what baked goodies can be had in these places.

For example, when we went to Tagaytay to attend a birthday party at my hubby’s friend’s house, we stopped by at a popular bakeshop on the way home. We got ourselves some pie, some breads, and some confectionery which we can eat and give to friends at home. Even when the budget was tight, we were able to buy quite a bit, which lasted us a few days, at the very least.

The same thing happens everywhere we go. Go to Carcar on a road trip, and we end up buying delicacies that are popular there – bucarilyo, chicharon, ampao. Although there were no baked goodies that could be easily associated with this place, we still ended up buying food that people can easily say came from there. Oh, we also bought torta cebu which is a popular pound cake from Argao, which is a few kilometers away.

In Boracay, we found ourselves looking for a popular treat that people also bought and took home with them when they went there. The popular kalamansi muffins. We bought a few boxes of this baked pastry (which is obviously being baked in a bakery oven since they do sell quite a lot daily), tried a box, and decide it was not as special as we were told it was. Well, we were warned that not everyone ends up liking it anyway, so at least we could say that we did try it.

When I was younger, a trip to Bacolod also found me and my family buying popular pastries from there before we went home. One such pastry is the piaya. This is a flat pastry filled with sticky sweet filling, some made out of munggo, and others made out of ube. These very flat discs (dunno what kind of baking accessories were used to get it that flat and still be flaky, probably some special rolling pin) are now being sold in grocery stores everywhere in the country, so there is no need to go to Bacolod to enjoy these today.

What is the point I am getting at? In order to really enjoy the places you travel to, finding the best baked goodies (and non-baked local delicacies for that matter) is one thing you should never forget to do. This is something we have been doing since I was a kid, and I suspect, is something we will be doing for as long as we find ourselves traveling.