OFF THE SHELF
Two coconut products star in many Filipino sweets

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor

Distinctly different though they appear similar, these sweet coconut preparations are used in Filipino pastries. Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser

Macapuno is the subject of debate. Some sources call it the meat of a particular type of mutant coconut. Others say it's not a coconut, but the fruit of another palm. A Web site, www.filipinoheritage.com, reports that farmers in the Philippines have learned how to cultivate the mutation to guarantee 80 percent macapuno fruits (as opposed to niyog, the Tagalog word for the regular coconut). Macapuno is known in English as coconut sport, because, in botany-speak, sport means a variant or mutant.

Nata de coco is a confection of soft coconut that's been cooked until it has gelled, then cut and bottled.

Both products consist of three ingredients — nut meats, cane or palm sugar syrup, and water — and there is some confusion about the terms in English-language resources. Some sources speak of "macapuno preserves" and describe this product as being the same as nata de coco.

More often, though, a distinction is made in this way: Macapuno is a solid gel in which long strings of coconut sport are suspended. Nata de coco is composed of chunks of jelly-like squares or rounds in a syrup.

In either case, the products are used to make custards, as an ingredient in cakes, wrapped in deep-fried lumpia with bananas and sometimes jackfruit (a dessert called turon) or in halo-halo (the word means mix-mix in Tagalog and involves layers of cooked, mixed fruit and sweetened shaved ice and/or ice cream).