Last month, we gave you the list of the most insane burgers we’ve encountered in Manila. Today, we’re going to tempt you once more to forget your diets as we round up the most sinful desserts we’ve tried in the city.
Toss away your calorie counters and ready your sweet teeth for Manila’s most sinful dessert creations.
1. Gino’s Pizza’s Nutella Soup (P180)
Branches: Makati and Katipunan, Quezon City
Gino's Brick Oven Pizza has built a cult following through time, with pizza lovers claiming it to be the best and the freshest in the metro (we most certainly agree!).
One would think that a restaurant whose main fare is practically made up of 90% carbs would lie low in other sections of the menu; Gino’s doesn’t. On the contrary, it pleases the starch and sugar gods further by offering Nutella Soup, a bread bowl filled with melted chocolate and hazelnut syrup. Eat it by tearing a piece from its crust, dunking it in the soup, and praying “bless me father for I have sinned.”
Nutella Soup
2. Magnum Manila's Death by Chocolate (P280)
Branch: SM Aura
Rich pleasures await dessertarians at Magnum’s pop-up store at SM Aura Premier’s Sky Park. The highlight of the pleasure store experience is the chance to Make Your Own Magnum where in you get to create the Magnum bar of your sweetest dreams (over 250,000 possibilities!) for P100.
Death by Chocolate
But if you really want to go overboard with dessert, choose from Chef Miko Aspiras’ array of plated (and almost borderline insane) creations. Death by Chocolate had us waving the white flag with its killer combo of dark chocolate lava cake, chocolate truffle Magnum, brownie pieces, and chocolate ‘crispearls’
3. Wicked Kitchen’s Gluttony Cookie (P295)
Wicked Kitchen’s desserts are named after the seven deadly sins. The most coveted of all is called Gluttony. This mutant cookie has a diameter the length of a regular utensil, thickness of almost an inch, a full scoop of mantecado ice cream, and a drizzling of chocolate syrup. According to the Wicked Chef Kooch Laxamana, under normal circumstances, the dessert is good enough to be shared by four gluttons.
Gluttony
4. Outback Steakhouse’s Chocolate Thunder from Down Under (P329)
Photo from Outback's website
After you demolish Outback’s Kookabura wings, Aussie Cheese Fries, Crispy Calamari and steaks, devour Chocolate Thunder from Down Under– a pecan brownie topped with rich vanilla ice cream, drizzled with warm chocolate sauce and chocolate shavings, then finished off with whipped cream. Make sure you have friends around to share this monster dessert which clocks in at a whopping 1,581 calories. But, hey, if it’s any consolation, Chocolate Thunder from Down Under is gluten-free. Yay?
Chocolate Thunder from Down Under
5. Diamond Hotel’s Ube Ensaymada (P150)
Ensaymada fans drive all the way to Diamond Hotel in Manila for its ube-filled ensaymada topped with generous butter paste and cheese. Each bite from this ensaymada leaves a thick trail of cheddar on the roof of your mouth; it doesn’t surprise us anymore that a piece is a dessert bomb worth 1,200 calories.
Photo from Diamond Hotel's website
And as if that’s not sinful enough, just this month, Diamond Hotel launched its Mushroom Truffle Ensaymada (P250) with fresh forest mushrooms infused with truffle oil and topped with a thick layer of cheddar cheese. Yes, it’s no dessert, but it’s still sinful enough for a mention here.
Ube Ensaymada and Mushroom Truffle Ensaymada are both available in Diamond Hotel’s Lobby Lounge and all Cake Club outlets – Rockwell and Bonifacio High Street from 7am onwards.
6. Bronuts’ Cream Cheese & Bacon Cronut (P110)
When the sweet-toothed population has gotten over their obsession with plain cupcakes and cheesecakes, they clamored for something crazier and better. Dominique Ansel remedied this craving by creating Cronut™– a flaky cross between croissant and donut—which took Manhattan (and eventually, Manila) by storm.
Bronut
Many have jumped in the bandwagon of creating cronuts in Manila but none had the balls to innovate it like how the bros from Bronuts did. Aside from offering generous portions, Bronuts sells cronuts in flavors like no other. Cream Cheese & Bacon cronut is a realized food porn that puts a slice of bacon and thick herb cream cheese together over crunchy layers of buttery pastry.
Bronuts are sold in 8 different flavors, all in the same gargantuan size, and priced at P110 each or P600 for a box of 6.
7. Max’s Restaurant’s Giant Halo-Halo (P450+)
Giant Halo-Halo
Photo from Max's Restaurant's Facebook page
Max’s Restaurant sells the biggest halo-halo in Metro Manila. Their supersized monstrosity is teeming with ingredients like macapuno balls, sweet beans, red mongo, garbanzoes, banana, kaong, gulaman, nata de coco and langka, shaved ice soaked in milk, topped with ube, leche flan, a generous sprinkle of rice crispies and cheese, plus three huge scoops of ube ice cream.
Six to eight people can share one serving of this halo-halo.
8. Flaming Wings’ Wicked Oreos (P75)
If bingeing on a pack of Oreo cookies makes you feel guilty, then Flaming Wings’ Wicked Oreos might send you running to the nearest confession room.
Wicked Oreos
Photo from Flaming Wings' website
In Wicked Oreos, three pieces of Oreo cookies are dunk in pancake batter, deep-fried, then served with vanilla ice cream.
9. Wicked by Cravings’ Brownie topped with Bacon Chocolate (P75)
To keep up with the demand for creative dessert mash-ups, The Cravings Group (TCG)—a 25 year-old restaurant group known for traditional recipes– opened up Wicked by Cravings, a playful dessert cafe at the 5th level, East Wing of Shangri-la Plaza.
Bacon Dipped in Dark Chocolate (P75)
Bacon-topped brownie (P75)
As part of its June promotions, Wicked by Cravings combines two of the best food items in the world– bacon and chocolates— in one sinful dessert: Bacon Brownies. These fudgy brownies are spread with dark chocolate, topped with crispy bacon dipped in chocolate, and sprinkled with chopped almonds. A mouthful to say, yes, but wait to you actually taste them devils.
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What other desserts have made you guilty as hell when you ate them? Let us know more about your sinful foodie stories in the comments section below.
