Picture perfect Belize’s location makes it the perfect spot to scuba dive and enjoy the humid breeze all the while enjoying seafood and refreshing drinks. However, for such a scenic coastal location, it also has quite a few desserts that are equal parts sugary and coconutty. Belize uses a great amount of its local produce which includes coconuts, sugar, spices, and limes. Belize is a confluence of multiple cultures so you will find a piece of every culture that the country has been home to and made them their own. Give these special sweets a try!
Made of ginger and a lot of coconut flakes, this caramel-like dessert is a great sweet that you can carry around whenever you crave something sweet. It also goes by the name “cuttabrute” which is held by the condensed milk and sweetened further with sugar. This is akin to chikki in our country if we go by its popularity and its availability.
Pastel Tres leches is the Spanish term for a "cake with three milks" and going by the name, the sponge cake is soaked in three varieties of milk: evaporated milk, condensed milk, and heavy cream. Known to be from Mexico with Nicaragua contesting the claim, this cake is popular all over Latin America and is a must-try if you’re in one of the countries. Often using cinnamon as a garnish, this cake might be simple but it’s incredibly moist, dense and milky.
This delicious treat is made with a combination of condensed milk, sugar, vanilla, butter, and nutmeg with peanuts, shredded coconut, or raisins added to it. Like most fudges, the Belizian fudge also is sweet and rich in its flavours despite being a hard and dense candy like a flattened caramel candy. But unlike caramel candies, they don’t stick to your teeth and are the right amount of brittle to not be hard on the teeth.
Another unique Belizean candy from Belize is made from the pulp of ripe tamarind combined with sugar making it the right amount of both sweet and sour. The preparation process is quite hands-on – the tamarind pulp is carefully rolled into small spheres, and then coated in a dusting of caster sugar. Some tamarind balls are spiced with a dash of cayenne pepper, so if you have a tolerance for spice, try this variation. The best part of this sweet is it has a homely feel, is locally made, and is quite cheap to buy.
When are visiting Belize, you'll likely come across street vendors offering a unique local delicacy– Craboo fruit preserved in sugary syrup. This small, round, yellow fruit is a beloved staple among locals, who refer to it affectionately as “nance”. The Craboo is harvested in a labour-intensive process, similar to litchis and mangoes, being carefully collected after falling from the trees from giant tarps that are spread out to catch the Craboo as it drops. After gathering, the mature fruit is preserved in large vats filled with sugar which helps in preserving the natural juices of the fruit. The Craboo is then packaged up in small, convenient bags, complete with fruity syrup.
Lemons are scarce in Belize, but the country has an abundance of limes – and the locals have found a good way to put this citrus fruit to use – making a lime pie. Rather than baking a full-sized pie and portioning it out, Belizean bakers assemble individual, single-serve pies. These petite pastries feature the same tangy-sweet filling as lemon pies but of course, these have the distinctive flavour profile of limes. Limes might be similar to lemons but are slightly more bitter which makes for a great contrast when paired with the light, airy meringue topping. This pie is a perfect companion to complement a morning coffee or afternoon lunch.
Pumpkins are associated with autumn, particularly marking the Halloween season and of course pumpkins. Belize isn’t impartial to it either and many homes make something called the dulce de calabaza. This dessert is a stewed pumpkin sweet, often cooked with its outer skins, that involves cooking the pumpkin for several hours with brown sugar and spices. The brown sugar caramelizes into a syrup that gets infused cinnamon, star anise, and allspice that seeps into the pumpkin, darkening it and making it mushy.