Latik

Coconut cream cooked until it splits, giving crisp curds and clear oil.

Vegan.

Ingredients

• 800 ml coconut cream, thick and unsweetened

Method

1. ONE INGREDIENT AND NOTHING ELSE. No sugar, no water, no salt. A dozen Philippine sweets call for latik, and it is worth knowing on its own rather than buried inside a pudding recipe.
2. Use thick coconut CREAM, not the thin milk. Milk takes twice as long and yields almost nothing.
3. Pour it into a wide dry pan — wide, so the surface area is large and the water can leave.
4. Simmer over a medium heat, stirring every minute or two. It will bubble, then thicken, then look curdled, which is correct and is the point: you are deliberately splitting it.
5. AFTER ABOUT 20 MINUTES THE OIL SEPARATES AND THE SOLIDS START TO BROWN. From here stir CONSTANTLY and watch it — the curds go from blond to golden to burnt in under two minutes, and burnt latik is bitter and cannot be rescued.
6. Take it off the moment the curds are an even golden brown and strain them out.
7. KEEP BOTH HALVES. The curds are the topping; the clear coconut oil left behind is for greasing moulds and brushing cakes, and throwing it away wastes the better half of the yield.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Philippines · All recipes