This bakeshop unveils new products tied to family stories and deep relations with the local community
Filipinos enjoy eating. They are avid chefs and bakers when it comes to cooking for friends and family. Tinapayan Festival, a local bakeshop that has been offering soft and sweet baked goods for over 40 years in Manila, is no stranger to this idea.
While patrons come back for bestsellers like the ensaymada, cheese rolls, eclairs, and napoleons among their slew of over 200 baked products, the bakeshop continues to innovate and recreate family recipes so that more Filipinos can enjoy delectable treats made from the heart.
“It was always a dream of ours to share what we have not only in the knowledge and skills in baking but also the family recipes we have grown to love. Our customers are very dear to us, so it is just right to share products that are inspired by our own family recipes and memories,” says Chito Chavez, founder and general manager.
Two years ago, the bestselling Queen’s Chocolate Cake was offered for the first time. It is made with the finest Couverture chocolate and the highest quality cream. The bakeshop answered a growing need for celebratory cakes on Mother’s Day when the Philippines underwent its first lockdown.
“When most of the local bakeries across Manila closed shop in 2020, we had to stay open to serve the community in need. We received a lot of inquiries for special cakes and thought why not create a premium chocolate cake befitting a queen for our deserving mothers. Using premium chocolate depicts how special our mothers are for us and we knew that our customers would love it, too,” explains operations manager Potenciano Clarito Chavez.
Aside from it being created in honor of Queen Elizabeth, the premium chocolate cake was also made in honor of the hard work, commitment, and love the family had for Maribel “Belen” C. Chavez, co-founder of Tinapayan Festival and the wife of Chito.
Oftentimes in Filipino culture, celebrating a small or big win, a birthday, anniversary, or anything else entails having a great dessert to top off a joyous occasion. Launched this month is Adelaida’s Torte, a special torte made of meringue with chopped nuts, filled with chocolate ganache using premium quality couverture chocolate, butter icing, and caramel, and topped off with rich butter icing explicitly made for the dessert.
‘It was always a dream of ours to share what we have not only in the knowledge and skills in baking but also the family recipes we have grown to love.’
Inspired by and a tribute to the founder’s late mother, Adelaida “Diday” B. Chavez, who loved planting cacao beans that were made into the local Batangas tablea the family would hand out as gifts to friends and relatives back in the day. It was just recently that the Chavez family decided to bake a chocolate torte taking inspired by Nanay Diday’s love for chocolate.
Making a comeback is a one-of-a-kind polvoron now dubbed, Nanay Diday’s Special Polvoron, which was based on the matron’s homemade recipe and features full cream powder, which complements all the other ingredients.
Nanay Diday was known back in the ’60s for molding polvoron using her hulma purchased in Escolta. This specific hulma was used by her family up until the late ‘80s. It was kept as a reminder for the family for all the years Nanay Diday gave to creating handmade polvoron that she served not only to her family but to close friends as well. This time around, the bakeshop has improved on the traditional family recipe to introduce this special polvoron.
Planting has been one of Nanay Diday’s hobbies in the past. One staple agricultural product she planted and used for her recipes was the Filipino favorite ube.
Growing up exposed to ube being incorporated and cooked as a staple dessert at home, Chito was inspired in the early 2000s to incorporate it into their loaves. Two of the products they created inspired by Nanay Diday’s love for the purple yam are the Ube Loaf and Ube Twirl.
The Ube Loaf is the bakeshop’s twist to the soft and moist bread with real ube halaya, low protein flour, eggs, milk, and refined sugar. The Ube Twirl, meanwhile, features real ube halaya filling, perfect for those on the go.
Tinapayan Festival is at 1650 Dapitan St. corner Don Quijote, Sampaloc, Manila. Call (02) +8 732 2188 or (63) 0961 715 2714 to advance orders. sales@tinapayan@gmail.com.