Tembleque (Puerto Rican coconut pudding)

Puerto Rican coconut milk pudding set with cornstarch, dusted with cinnamon: delicate and trembling

Origin: Puerto Rico

From the journey of Coconut.

The name tembleque comes from the Spanish temblar, to tremble, and it perfectly describes the dessert's most distinctive quality: the barely-set, quivering consistency of a pudding that holds its moulded shape but shakes at the merest touch, trembling on the plate like something alive. This textural precision is the cook's highest achievement, and it demands exact timing: too little cooking and the starch won't set; too much and the pudding becomes firm and loses its delicate tremble. Puerto Rico's coconut culture derives from the same Atlantic dispersal that brought coconut palms to Jamaica, Trinidad, and the wider Caribbean basin in the 16th and 17th centuries, carried by Portuguese and Spanish colonists planting coconut palms along their colonial coastlines from Brazil northward through the island chain. The African population brought to work the sugar plantations of Puerto Rico; who had, in many cases, come from the West African coastal communities already familiar with coconut from Portuguese planting there, adopted the coconut enthusiastically and built it into Puerto Rican cooking at every level. Puerto Rico today is a deeply coconut-saturated food culture: arroz con coco (coconut rice), coquito (the Puerto Rican holiday drink made from coconut cream and rum, comparable to eggnog), tembleque, and coconut flan all express the island's love affair with the nut. Tembleque is a coconut milk pudding set with cornstarch: a technique that places it in direct kinship with a family of coconut milk puddings that spans the entire globe: haupia in Hawaii (the Hawaiian version set with arrowroot or cornstarch, served at luaus), muhallabia in Oman and Lebanon (set with rice flour), woon maprao in Thailand (a layered coconut jelly using agar), and manjar blanco in Colombia (a coconut milk version of dulce de leche). The technique of thickening coconut milk with starch and setting it is so universal, appearing independently in cultures that had no contact with each other, that it suggests something fundamental about coconut milk's cooking properties: its combination of fat, protein, and sugar makes it ideal for this kind of set dessert. Tembleque is Puerto Rico's Christmas dessert, served at every Nochebuena (Christmas Eve) table, dusted with ground cinnamon and sometimes topped with toasted coconut or a drizzle of coconut syrup. Its simplicity; four ingredients, one pot, no eggs, no baking; makes it one of the most accessible and satisfying desserts in the Caribbean repertoire.

Ingredients

Base

  • 800 ml full-fat coconut milk (two 400 ml cans)

Thickener

  • 70 g cornstarch (cornflour)

Sweetener

  • 80 g caster sugar

Seasoning

  • 0.25 tsp salt

Flavouring

  • 0.5 tsp vanilla extract (optional)

Garnish

  • 1.5 tsp ground cinnamon, for dusting
  • 30 g sweetened toasted coconut flakes (optional garnish)

Method

  1. In a medium saucepan, whisk together the coconut milk, cornstarch, sugar, and salt until completely smooth with no lumps. Do this while the mixture is cold; cornstarch must be dissolved in cold liquid.
  2. Place the saucepan over medium heat and cook, whisking constantly, for 10–12 minutes. The mixture will begin to thicken noticeably; first at the bottom and edges of the pan, then throughout. Keep whisking without stopping.
  3. The pudding is ready when it has thickened to the consistency of heavy cream or a loose béchamel; thick enough to coat the back of a spoon heavily but still very pourable. Large bubbles should just begin to surface (about 12 minutes on medium heat). Remove from heat and stir in vanilla extract if using.
  4. Pour immediately into a lightly oiled 1-litre mould (a round cake tin, a bundt tin, individual ramekins, or a shallow serving bowl). Smooth the surface. Allow to cool to room temperature, then cover with cling film and refrigerate for at least 4 hours until firmly set.
  5. To unmould: run a thin knife around the edge of the mould. Place a serving plate face-down on top of the mould, then invert confidently. The tembleque should release cleanly onto the plate. If using a serving bowl, skip unmoulding and serve directly from the bowl.
  6. Dust generously with ground cinnamon immediately before serving. Scatter toasted coconut flakes over if desired. Serve chilled.

Notes

Tembleque keeps refrigerated for up to 4 days, covered. The set firms slightly over time; day-old tembleque is a bit denser than freshly made, but still excellent. For a more intensely coconutty version, use 600 ml coconut milk and 200 ml coconut cream. The cinnamon dusting is traditional and non-negotiable; without it, the tembleque looks plain and tastes incomplete.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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