Eating my cake too

Yesterday, a friend of mine asked if I knew where he could get a coconut cake* for Saturday. I had a flashback of the birthday cakes I'd had as a kid. Until Costco came along with their shrink-wrapped sheet cakes, my friends and I were subjected to my Pau's cake choices. What I usually got was a faintly sweet mocha cake with sugary, translucent white macapuno (young coconut jam) filling and mocha buttercream, which probably came from a Filipino bakery called Betsy's (if I recall correctly) in L.A.

Betsy's was one of my Pau's regular joints. He would go there once every other week or so on his way home from work. If I was lucky, I'd stick my hand into one of the white paper sacks and the pan de sal—oblong, dense dinner rolls that are slightly sweet, yeasty, and incredible with a little butter—would still be warm. They were even better sliced into three flat ovals, toasted, and topped with scrambled eggs with fish sauce, tomato and garlic. No pan de sal I've had from anywhere else could compare to Betsy's. I wonder if they're still around.

But I was always disappointed to see that funky mocha cake. It made me feel like such a foreigner. Why couldn't I have a normal flavor? I wanted chocolate or white cake with the kind of bleached white frosting so thick with sugar granules you could feel the grit between your molars when you rubbed them together. Or maybe a yellow cake with strawberry filling and a simulated whipped cream icing. Or, better yet, the cake of my dreams -- a freezer-dwelling, rainbow shaped Baskin Robbins confection with mint chip ice cream and a toothsome, icy layer of chocolate cake.

Now, of course, I can't stop dreaming of the mocha macapuno cake. Anyone know of any good Filipino bakeries? I suppose there are some in Woodside. I can taste it, I can almost feel it in my mouth -- that mildly sweet, coffee tinted buttercream; the silky macapuno strings in clear, sweet jelly; the airy tan sponge cake. I'm looking forward to the moment when that cake and I meet again, and I can prove that kid in my memories wrong.

*In case you're wondering, I suggested Billy's Bakery, Sugar Sweet Sunshine, and Baked, where, unlike certain places we know, you don't have to place an order 8 weeks in advance and leave your first born child as an advance deposit to get a cake.