page_title: Filipino cuisine
section_title: Desserts
hierarchical_section_title: Filipino cuisine / Type of food / Common food / Desserts
caption_attribution_description: A cooked rice cake dessert drizzled with a caramelized coconut cream.
context_page_description: Filipino cuisine is composed of the cuisines of more than a hundred distinct ethno-linguistic groups found throughout the Philippine archipelago. However, a majority of mainstream Filipino dishes that compose Filipino cuisine are from the cuisines of the various ethnolinguistic groups and tribes of the archipelago, including the Ilocano, Pangasinan, Kapampangan, Tagalog, Bicolano, Visayan, Chavacano and Maranao ethno-linguistic groups. The style of food making and the food associated with it have evolved over many centuries from their Austronesian origins to a mixed cuisine of Indian, Chinese, Spanish and American influences, in line with the major waves of influence that had enriched the cultures of the archipelago, as well as others adapted to indigenous ingredients and the local palate.
  Dishes range from the very simple, like a meal of fried salted fish and rice, to fish curry, chicken curry, complex paellas and cozidos of Iberian origin created for fiestas. Popular dishes include: lechón, longganisa, tapa, torta, adobo, dinuguan, kaldereta, mechado, pochero, afritada, kare-kare, pinakbet, crispy pata, hamonado, sinigang, pancit, and lumpia.
context_section_description: As the Philippines is a tropical country, it should come as no surprise that there are many treats made from rice and coconuts. One often seen dessert is bibingka, a hot rice cake optionally topped with a pat of butter, slices of kesong puti (white cheese), itlog na maalat (salted duck eggs), and sometimes grated coconut. There are also glutinous rice sweets called biko made with sugar, butter, and coconut milk. In addition, there is a dessert known as bitsu-bitsu, also known as a Pinoy donut, made with fried rice flour which is then coated with Muscovado sugar syrup. There is also Karioka, made from glutinous rice flour, coconut, and coconut milk, fried and skewered and slathered with a brown sugar glaze. Another brown rice cake is kutsinta.
  Puto is another well-known example of sweet steamed rice cakes prepared in many different sizes and colors. Sapin-sapin (sapin means layer) are three-layered, tri-colored sweets made with rice flour, purple yam, and coconut milk characterized by its gelatinous appearance. Palitaw are rice patties that are covered with sesame seeds, sugar, and coconut; pisti-pisti which are cassava patties coated with cheese or coconut; and tibok-tibok is based on carabao milk as a de leche (similar to maja blanca).  As a snack, Binatog is created with corn kernels with shredded coconut. Packaged snacks wrapped in banana or palm leaves then steamed, suman are made from sticky rice.
  For cold desserts there is halo-halo which can be described as a dessert made with shaved ice, milk, and sugar with additional ingredients like coconut, ube halaya (mashed purple yam) or ube ice cream, "leche flan" or caramel custard, plantains, jackfruit, red beans, tapioca and pinipig being typical. Some of the Philippines' largest restaurant chains, such as Kuya J, have dedicated dessert menus filled with many traditional Filipino desserts.
  Other similar treats made with shaved ice include saba con yelo which is shaved ice served with milk and minatamis na saging (ripe plantains chopped and caramelized with brown sugar); mais con yelo which is shaved ice served with steamed corn kernels, sugar, and milk; and buko pandan sweetened grated strips of coconut with gulaman, milk, and the juice or extract from pandan leaves.  Sorbetes (ice cream) is popular, as well, with some local versions utilizing coconut milk instead of cow milk.  Ice candy, are popular frozen snacks usually made from fruit juice, chocolate or local ingredients such as mung beans and ube.  It can be any kind of flavor depending on the maker; chocolate and buko (coconut) flavored ice candy are two of the most popular. Another dessert, often served during Christmas and New Year's Eve, is mango float, a dessert composed of Graham cracker, mangoes, cream and milk, and created by layering them together in a dish and then refrigerating or blast chilling.
caption: A suman with latik syrup.
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