Ho-Land Hopia Baboy

I used to think that hopia was just all right. These tiny cakes are sold at every other side street bakery. It's affordable, sticks to your insides and sometimes leaves an aftertaste of shortening, has a crust like fossilized phyllo wraps, and fillings that were boiled to the point of sometimes being unidentifiably although, for the most part, inoffensively sweet.

One exception to this, to me, is hopia baboy. It's identifiable, and...off, not offensive, but off--at most, off-full.

It's awful. I know that sweetened meats can still work well, especially pork, but hopia baboy just usually tasted to me like an identity crisis. It was like an empanada put it up for adoption and it went to a nice hopia family but the community still heavily stigmatized adoption and it had begun to ideate some seriously antisocial behavior. That's what it tastes like.

Otherwise, hopia was ehh...okay.

That was my general attitude until my wonderful extended family, adventurous foodies and especially my uncle who knows all the best Chinese restaurants, introduced me to Ho-Land.

Ho-Land has elevated hopia to an art form. You can get a rolled pack of five hopia pieces for anywhere between Php 40 - Php 45, and the experience is priceless. The golden-brown crusts are never too oily, and the fillings burst with flavor: monggo of various colors, ube, some with gummy cubes of tikoy added, versions with different oils used, versions that are made light and creamy like custard, all of them delicious.

Or are they?

Spoilers: Yes, yes they are. Ho-Land is a triumph of culinary artistry, and their hopia baboy is no exception.

Side-note, here, in that hopia baboy basically translates to cake (of) pig. But pig isn't even the main ingredient, not pork, not any named pig body part... It's wintermelon, or wax gourd as the package insists on calling it.

There is very little oink in a hopia baboy, really, and almost certainly no meat. It's called so because one of the ingredients is lard, which this doesn't even seem to have in the ingredients list.

Not that I missed lard, or anything.

When I opened the pack, I was surprised to see each cake coated with sesame seeds.

Then I bit into one.

It's like a festival in my mouth. It has so many more textures than Ho-Land's other flavors have. The candied wintermelon crunches like frost, the filling is creamy at some parts, and jellied at other parts, it has a crisp lift to it grounded by the nuttiness from the sesame seed coating, and then with another bite there would be just a hint of the identity-crisis granting umami--in this symphony of complementary flavors, the umami actually works.

That said, I've got a major sweet tooth, and this is definitely one of the sweetest flavors that Ho-Land has to offer, if not the sweetest. It might not be for everyone.

Hopia baboy used to be my least favorite hopia flavor. I was curious about how well Ho-Land could do it, and I certainly didn't expect this to become my favorite. Hooray for Ho-Land exceeding expectations.