Sabor Ilonggo

Pasalubong from Iloilo City nowadays isn't just limited to those "old world" biscuits and baked goodies the city is famous for. Biscocho, barquillos, galletas, barquiron, piaya and a whole lot more used to be a staple in pasalubong boxes coming from Iloilo. Now a relatively modern baked goodie has overtaken the title as the most sought after pasalubong from Iloilo. And it's not an entirely native product nor had it “roots” from Iloilo. It’s actually an imported product given a distinct, local feel and is now among the best selling Iloilo pasalubong items.

Butterscotch - a type of confectionery made by boiling sugar, butter, cream, and vanilla. In many ways the ingredients for butterscotch are similar to toffee; the major difference is that the sugar is boiled to the soft crack stage for butterscotch and the hard crack stage for toffee, (from Wikipedia) is now synonymous with Iloilo pasalubong. Boxes of goodies from Iloilo surely would contain packs of these moist and chewy confection commonly wrapped colored cellophane. The most popular and best selling brand is Biscocho Haus. To quote from MyFoodieNotebook "Notably, nothing in that ingredients list mentions anything about flour or eggs. Biscocho Haus' butterscotch, however, does. As per the package, Biscocho Haus' butterscotch is made of flour, butter, sugar, eggs, and milk. Strictly speaking therefore, I think Biscocho Haus' butterscotch is more like a butterscotch brownie."Because of it's popularity, other pasalubong shops and bakeries have joined in the butterscotch bandwagon and came up with their own butterscotch recipe to compete and hopefully make a niche of it's own. So the next time you're in Iloilo, don't forget to bring home some of these goodies and mind you, you will soon feel you didn't buy enough butterscotch from Iloilo.

Note: I have reviewed more than a dozen brands and made my Iloilo butterscotch guide in my other blog - Flavours of Iloilo.