Vjandep Pastel

Continuing with the rundown of brother's pasalubong from Cagayan de Oro...






Whenever brother travels to CDO to visit his girlfriend, he would always take home a box or two of Vjandep Pastel because it is one of the most popular foods to take home from that part of the country. Although this food started out in Camiguin, having four branches in Cagayan de Oro alone made it part of the City as well.

These very soft, melt in your mouth buns were about the size of a dinner roll, and the best selling filling would be the Yema (a mix of eggs, milk, butter, and sugar). I found it really delicious, but a bit sweet for my taste. My brother has traveled to CDO four times already (I think), so I have gotten used to the taste of it, so when he traveled there last August, I sent him a text message to bring home a different flavor - just so we can taste all flavors available. Come to think of it, it's not everyday that brother gets to travel there, and because this food is not available (at least not yet) in Metro Manila, might as well use the chances to taste as much flavors as we can.

Aside from the Yema, other flavors are:

• Cheese
• Langka (Jackfruit)
• Macapuno
• Mango
• Pineapple
• Ube

Flavors available by order are:

• Durian
• Guava
• Strawberry
• Chocolate
• Special Yema
  

Even if the first list were part of the "readily available" flavors, it is still recommended for people to call in the branch where they will buy the Pastel from to ask which flavors are available and to make an order if they want specific flavors. Brother told me that whenever he would travel back to Manila from CDO, he would always see people having big plastic bags full of Pastel, so if you're traveling to CDO and would like to take home these goodies, make a call or risk just taking home the Original Yema.

I have already tasted the cheese flavor (brother's second trip), and it was good, though the grated cheese filling might tend to be gooey in the mouth. :) For this trip, brother phoned in to order chocolate, strawberry, and ube flavors, but there was a little misunderstanding and the staff wasn't able to make the chocolate ones. Brother just took home the ube and strawberry flavors, which somehow gave us a taste of Baguio City. Hahaha. The strawberry one obviously used the jam as filling, but it was still good. The ube is now my favorite Pastel flavor - it was like eating creamy ube halaya in a bun.

When brother travels back to CDO next time, I sure hope he could buy the chocolate, pineapple, and the special yema flavors.

*** Jenn ***

PS - The ube filling on the first picture looked as if there were little filling, but just like any filled pastry, it wasn't equally distributed (it so happened that this side had the lesser filling). Actually, even if the filling wasn't much, it also felt they had a lot of filling because the buns were really soft.