Cassava pudding is a Garifuna and creole sweet of Belize — grated cassava baked with coconut milk, sugar and spice into a moist, chewy slab. It draws on the cassava-and-coconut cooking that travelled the Caribbean with the Garifuna people.
Cut a square of cassava pudding and it's dense, moist, and chewy, deeply golden, fragrant with coconut, cinnamon, and nutmeg, studded with sweet raisins. Bite: the grated cassava gives a unique sticky-chewy texture (unlike any flour cake), the coconut rich, the spices warm, the raisins bursts of sweetness. A humble, satisfying Garifuna sweet — chewier and denser than it looks.
Grated raw cassava is high in starch; baked with liquid, the starch gelatinizes into a dense, sticky-chewy set quite unlike a flour cake. Coconut milk enriches and moistens it; the warm spices and raisins flavor it. Cooling fully lets the starch firm so it slices cleanly.
Variations
With a burnt-sugar top. With grated coconut mixed in. Spicier with clove and ginger. With condensed milk. Steamed instead of baked. With vanilla.
On the Palate
Where Cassava Pudding sits in the Belizean flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 8How it's made
8 steps · 25 min active + 55 min waiting
- 118 min
Peel and finely grate 800 g cassava; if very wet, squeeze out a little liquid.
Watch outGrate the cassava fine and squeeze off only the excess free liquid — keep the starchy pulp, that starch is what sets the pudding into its dense chewy slice.
- 24 min
Mix the cassava with 400 ml coconut milk and 150 g sugar.
- 32 min
Stir in 80 g raisins, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp nutmeg, and a pinch of salt.
- 42 min
Add 40 g melted butter and mix to a thick batter.
- 52 min
Pour into a greased baking dish and level.
- 650 min
Bake at 180°C for 50 min until set, golden, and slightly chewy on top.
Watch outIt's done when the top is golden and springs back with a slight tackiness — a clean skewer is too dry; you want it just-set, not cakey.
- 730 min
Cool completely so it firms.
Watch outCool it completely before cutting — warm, the starch is still soft and it'll smear; fully cold it firms up and slices clean.
- 82 min
Cut into squares and serve.
