Tembleque


Tembleque is a coconut dessert pudding from Puerto Rico. It is one of the most popular desserts in Puerto Rican cuisine.

Ingredients

Tembleque is made by cooking coconut milk, heavy cream, salt, cornstarch, cinnamon, and sugar. Recipes may include spices such as cloves, vanilla, and nutmeg or extra flavoring such as rum, orange blossom water and cream of coconut, or may be garnished with mint, almonds, fruit, flavored syrup or chocolate shavings.

Cultural importance

It is a holiday dish, served on New Year's Day throughout the island of Puerto Rico. While the recipe may have originated in Puerto Rico, there are variants on the dish in Latin America and other countries. In Brazil, the dish is known as manjar branco. According to the Encyclopedia of Puerto Rico, published by the Foundation for the Humanities, each time a Puerto Rican migrant to the United States comes closer and closer to forgetting their roots, foods like tembleque bring them back and remind them who they are, reminds them of their island and of their grandmother.

Tembleque

In Spanish, the word tembleque is an adjective used to describe something that shakes or a noun, to describe the shakes themselves. The dessert, due to its Jell-O-like, gel texture trembles, shivers, shakes, and that is what the finished dessert does, when prepared correctly.

In popular culture