Filipino desserts
Filipino desserts bring together native rice cakes, Spanish custards and meringues, Chinese snacks and American ice cream, all made with coconut, rice and tropical fruit. This guide gathers every traditional Filipino dessert on DessertCat, from layered sapin-sapin to the shaved-ice halo-halo.
All 13 Filipino desserts
ii. The Filipino dessert tradition
The Philippine sweet kitchen sits at a crossroads. Austronesian rice-and-coconut cooking gave the country its kakanin, the family of rice cakes. More than three centuries of Spanish rule brought custards, meringue and egg-yolk sweets; Chinese traders and settlers brought steamed buns and bean fillings; and the American period added ice cream, cakes and refrigerated desserts. Filipino desserts mix all four freely.
Key ingredients
Glutinous rice and rice flour, coconut milk and grated coconut, muscovado and brown sugar, ube (purple yam), saba bananas, jackfruit, young coconut (buko), pandan and lye water are the core. Ube gives its colour to ube ice cream and countless cakes; saba bananas are skewered and caramelised for banana cue or wrapped in spring-roll pastry with jackfruit for turon.
Techniques
Kakanin are mostly steamed or baked. Puto are fluffy steamed rice cakes; kutsinta are chewy brown cakes set with lye water and served with grated coconut; sapin-sapin is steamed in coloured layers, typically purple, white and yellow; suman is glutinous rice and coconut milk wrapped in leaves; bibingka is traditionally baked in a clay pot lined with banana leaf, with heat from above and below. The Spanish legacy shows in sans rival, cashew meringue layered with buttercream.
Regional styles
Every province has its own versions of kakanin, often sold by street vendors and at market stalls. Taho — warm silken tofu with brown-sugar syrup and sago pearls — is a morning street food with Chinese roots. Buko pandan, a chilled salad of young coconut and pandan jelly, and the layered shaved-ice halo-halo are the modern party and summer favourites.
Occasions
Bibingka and puto bumbong are closely associated with Simbang Gabi, the dawn Masses before Christmas, when they are sold outside churches. Kakanin are shared at fiestas, birthdays and family gatherings, and halo-halo is the classic answer to the hot dry season.
iii. Common questions
What are traditional Filipino desserts?
Traditional Filipino desserts include kakanin (rice cakes) such as puto, bibingka, suman, kutsinta and sapin-sapin, along with halo-halo, leche flan, turon, taho, buko pandan and ube halaya. Many are made from glutinous rice, coconut and brown sugar.
What is kakanin?
Kakanin is the Filipino name for the family of native rice cakes and sweets, from the Tagalog word for rice, kanin. They are usually made with glutinous rice or rice flour and coconut milk, and are steamed, baked or wrapped in leaves.
What is puto made of?
Puto is a steamed Filipino rice cake made from rice flour (traditionally fermented rice batter), sugar, water or coconut milk and a raising agent. It is often topped with cheese or salted egg and served with savoury dishes such as dinuguan.
What is the Filipino dessert with purple, white and yellow layers?
That is usually sapin-sapin, a steamed glutinous rice and coconut milk cake made in coloured layers, typically flavoured with ube, coconut and jackfruit, and topped with toasted coconut curds (latik).
What is the difference between sans rival and dacquoise?
Sans rival is a Filipino cake of cashew meringue layers with French buttercream, developed from the French tradition of nut meringue cakes. A dacquoise uses almond or hazelnut meringue and can be filled with cream or mousse as well as buttercream.