These are the Halloween food I grew up with---palitaw and suman or biko. Palitaw, muase in Ilonggo, is a small flat rice cake topped with grated coconut mixed with sugar (or muscovado) and toasted sesame seeds. Suman, popularly known as biko, is another sticky rice recipe cooked in coconut milk and muscovado. I mastered making palitaw one summer vacation when I was about 12 and there was nothing else to do. That summer, aside from palitaw, I also learned how to make lanson (from cassava) and linupak (from boiled banana). Palitaw is actually very easy to prepare---just drop scoops of galapong (batter of sticky rice) into boiling water. Flat disks would float when they are done.The palitaw on top was my dessert at Via Mare last weekend, and my mother cooked the yummy biko this afternoon.
