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You'll mix coconut milk, egg yolks, and sugar into batter and pour your first layer into a tin over Isabel's wood-fired oven, then wait and repeat, layer after layer, as she tells you which festivals call for how many. By evening you'll lift out a golden, sixteen-layer bebinca you built one pour at a time.
Bebinca is the centrepiece of Goan Christmas tables, and its slow layer-by-layer baking is a dying household skill as families increasingly buy it ready-made from bakeries.
Bebinca is a Goan Portuguese-influenced layered dessert traditionally baked at Christmas, its many layers said to represent the different stages of life or the layers of tradition itself.
We're still verifying a practitioner for this experience — check back soon.
Morning
Prepare batter and learn the layering technique
Midday to afternoon
Pour and bake successive layers in the wood-fired oven
Evening
Unmould and taste your finished bebinca
Difficulty
Moderate — a long, patient process with an open oven
Age suitability
10 and up
Pouring a batter layer
Wood-fired oven
The finished sixteen-layer bebincaPhotographs from this experience will replace these panels once available.
Why does it take a full day?
Each of the sixteen layers is poured and baked individually, which is what gives bebinca its texture.
Can I take the whole bebinca home?
Yes, you leave with the full bebinca you baked, wrapped for travel.
“Slow, meditative, and the smell of caramelising sugar all day was heavenly.”
Natasha C. · 5/5
“Isabel's stories about Christmas baking made the long process fly by.”
Robert F. · 5/5
Not a sight to see — a practice to enter.