Puerto Rican Dessert Recipes
From silky coconut tembleque to spiced arroz con dulce, discover the sweets that define Puerto Rico’s rich dessert tradition.
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Puerto Rican desserts blend Spanish colonial baking, Taíno ingredients like cassava and coconut, and African culinary influences into a sweet tradition built on rice, coconut milk, and warm spices. Rum-soaked cakes, coconut puddings, and holiday sweets like arroz con dulce and tembleque appear at nearly every celebration on the island.
Tembleque
Tembleque is a silky coconut milk pudding thickened with cornstarch, molded into a jiggly dome and dusted with ground cinnamon. It’s a beloved staple at Puerto Rican holiday tables, prized for its delicate wobble and pure coconut flavor.
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A Guide to Puerto Rican Desserts
Puerto Rican desserts are coconut and guava. Tembleque is the coconut milk pudding that wobbles, and arroz con dulce is rice pudding cooked in coconut milk with raisins and spices, both Christmas staples that get made all year. Pasta de guayaba y queso, guava paste with white cheese, is the two-ingredient dessert, and pan de Mallorca, the powdered-sugar sweet bread, is breakfast that passes for dessert.
Start with the recipes above, then see the full roundup of 15 Puerto Rican desserts, or explore all Puerto Rican food and Latin and Spanish desserts across the site.
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Explore our complete roundup, or browse desserts from across Latin America and Spain.