25 Best Filipino Desserts To Try - Restaurant Clicks (2024)

Banana Cue

Banana cue is technically more of a snack than a post-meal dessert, but it’s still a scrumptious sweet that works perfectly at any time.

As its name implies, it consists of skewered banana slices cooked over an open flame.

In some cases, the banana cue can be sprinkled with brown sugar.

Bibingka (Filipino Coconut Cake)

The Philippines is the second largest coconut producer on the planet, so you’ll find plenty of coconut dishes in Pinoy cuisine.

One of the best dishes is this bibingka, a cake made with cream cheese, milk, and cream of coconut.

If you make it at home, you might even sprinkle the final product with some toasted coconut flakes.

Biko (Filipino Sticky Rice Cake)

Another key crop in Filipino food is Biko, a sticky rice cake that is both incredibly easy and incredibly delicious.

It has five ingredients: glutinous rice, coconut milk, water, dark brown sugar, and salt.

The rice and coconut milk give a subtly sweet base to the dish, while the brown sugar adds a rich caramel flavor—and to top it all off, the salt makes everything just pop.

Buko Pandan (Filipino Coconut Dessert)

Buko is the Tagalog word for coconut, and Pandan is a variety of piney plants called screwpine, so put them together, and you get this incredible dish.

But, perhaps contrary to your expectation, this isn’t a cake or a pastry. Instead, Buko pandan is a dish of sweetened coconut-flavored cream with pandan jelly cubes suspended inside.

Those lucky enough to enjoy Buko Pandan also get a feast for the eyes: the bright green cubes look like they’ve burst straight out of a Dr. Seuss book.

Buko Salad

The next dessert on our list is another buko treat: buko salad.

This incredibly popular treat is a fruit salad of sorts, consisting of various fruits, sugar plum, nata de coco (fermented jellied coconut water), coconut, cream, and condensed milk.

When it all comes together, it’s a divine sweet-and-creamy dessert that’s at home on any Filipino menu.

Cassava Cake

Cassava cake is a mainstay at Filipino functions, and for good reason.

The cake has a delightful, subtly earthy flavor with the tubular tuber known as cassava as its base.

Not to worry, though, this cake doesn’t taste like earth: the grated cassava is folded in with coconut milk, condensed milk, and custard, giving it a pop of sweetness.

Filipino Coconut Macaroons

While non-Pinoys are used to seeing coconut macarons in stores, these little delights are slightly different.

Coconut macaroons outside the Philippines tend to use dried coconut, which gives the final treats a crispy, flaky crust.

However, Filipino coconut macaroons use dry desiccated coconut, which gives a smooth texture and airy taste.

Filipino Egg Pie

The Filipino egg pie is a much-beloved dessert served throughout the Philippines, from school cafeterias to at-home desserts.

The egg pie is quite similar to an egg custard pie, but whereas that dish is rich and somewhat gelatinous, this one is more akin to a pie.

Ginataang Halo Halo

When you’re in the mood for a hot dessert, try out ginataang halo halo.

This pudding-like dish features taro, yam, cassava, sweet potatoes, tapioca pearls, bananas, jackfruit, and rice flour dough suspended in a luminous pink coconut sauce.

Leche Flan

Like other flans, leche flan is an egg custard topped with caramel.

The Filipino retention, however, adds a special Pinoy twist: in the Philippines, leche flan is served over rice and is sometimes made with water buffalo milk and flavored with dayap, a lime local to the islands.

Remember that this flan tends to be richer than Spanish flan because of its greater proportion of yolk and condensed milk.

Halo-Halo (Filipino Shaved Iced Sundae)

Think you know ice cream sundaes? Think again. The Halo-Halo is a distinctly Filipino rendition of the dish that combines ice cream with shaved ice and other treats.

The dessert is built in layers: at the bottom are sweetened beans and fruit, topped with shaved ice, evaporated milk, and ice cream.

For an especially colorful treat, use ice cream made from ube, a purple yam.

Filipino Lengua de Gato

Lengua de gato means “cat tongue” in English, an apt name for delicious shortbread cookies.

They might look similar to French madeleines or Italian shortbread biscotti, but they have a special place in the hearts of Filipino cookie fanatics; the variations from Baguio, a breezy mountain town in Luzon, are especially famous.

Mais Con Yelo

Mais con yelo, like many other Filipino phrases, is a variation on a Spanish phrase—”maiz con hielo,” which means “corn with ice cream” in English.

As its name implies, this dish draws on the subtly sweet flavors of corn and pairs it with ice cream, layering corn kernels, shaved ice, sugar, and milk for a delectable summer dessert.

Mamon (Filipino Sponge Cake)

Mamon is a Filipino chiffon, or sponge cake, which is baked in cupcake molds.

The dish takes on a Pinoy flair with the addition of special toppings, like cream cheese, butter, and grated cheese.

Minatamis na Saging (Plantain Banana in Syrup)

If you like bananas, there’s nothing better for your sweet tooth than minatamis na saging, a syrupy, stick mess of sweet sliced plantains.

The dish only requires brown sugar and water to form the caramel-like syrup, but some choose to add toppings like milk.

Palitaw

Palitaw is a cousin to Biko, an earlier entry on this list.

But whereas Biko is a highly sweet bite of caramelized delight, palitaw is a smaller, more compressed cake made from ground glutinous rice cakes, toasted sesame seeds, and coconut.

Some variations on the cake include chocolate, which makes a perfect complement to the sweet rice flavor.

Polvoron

Filipino food is replete with culinary innovation.

The island’s many cultures have created a variety of desserts using the archipelago’s staple ingredients.

Polvoron is no exception. It’s a shortbread, but rather than being made of sugar, butter, and flour, polvoron adds powdered milk and toasts the flour.

Puto

Leave your dirty mind at the door—this dessert doesn’t derive its name from the Spanish expletive but rather from the Malay “putto,” which means “portioned.”

Putos are made by adding fermented rice batter to individual molds (thus the name) and then steaming them until they’re fluffy and divine.

Silvanas

Silvanas is deceptively complex and incredibly delicious.

Silvanas is a dessert sandwich: they consist of cashew meringue cookies, between which is a buttercream filling.

To make it even better, silvanas are made by covering the sandwich with more buttercream and then with crumbled cashews and cookies.

Suman

Suman is another rice-based dessert, and once again, it originates from the unique ingredients of the Philippines’ ecosystem.

To make suman, Filipino cooks wrap glutinous rice in banana leaves or leaves from other tropical trees and then steam it, forming a sweet, delectable delight.

You can also add extra toppings, like peanuts.

Taho (Filipino Sweet Tofu Dessert)

Although tofu is more commonly associated with Chinese and Japanese culture, it is also a part of Filipino cuisine.

This dessert is a layered dish consisting of silken tofu, tapioca pearls, and syrup.

Filipino Turon

Think you don’t have enough banana desserts in your life? Filipino desserts prove you wrong.

Like other Filipino desserts, turon—a fried spring roll filled with banana and jackfruit—can be eaten throughout the day and makes a perfect sweet snack.

If you want to make turon at home, consider adding mango, cheese, or tubers.

Filipino Carioca

Do you have a surplus of glutinous rice flour on your hands? Carioca is here for you.

These treats--skewered fried dough balls topped with caramel sauce--are great when you need a decadent mid-afternoon snack or an explosively delicious dessert.

Filipino Ensaymada

Ensaymada comes to Filipino cuisine from Spanish culture; it originated on the idyllic island of Mallorca.

A variety of southern European and Latin American cultures have versions of the ensaymada, sometimes including reduced pork lard.

The Pinoy version ditches the lard and adds a topping of butter and sugar.

Ube Kutsinta

Ube, which has cameoed on this list, is a treat like no other, being delicious and beautiful.

It adds flair to this dessert: while kutsinta usually consists of rice, this version swaps the grain for mashed ube and cassava powder, making a tuber-tastic delight.