It’s December, and the festive season of Christmas has begun. Food brands are ready, such as Sebastian’s Ice Cream, an artisanal ice cream brand that offers consistently good seasonal ice cream flavors personally crafted by its youthful owner and fun-loving ice cream lover Ian Carandang. The brand just released its Christmas 2023 Collection, which puts together all-Filipino flavors inspired by the Filipino Christmas celebration.
Puto Bumbong ice cream makes a comeback this Christmas. It tastes just like the purple-colored kakanin that is closely associated with the Christmas season.
Every Christmas, stalls selling freshly cooked puto bumbong pop up in communities, and Sebastian’s ice cream version of it stays very true to the native delicacy, with each scoop served with freshly grated coconut and muscovado sugar. Joining it is palitaw, another kakanin ice cream that is made with malagkit rice and macapuno strings, and is topped with grated coconut and toasted sesame seeds. It’s amusing to look at both the puto bumbong and the palitaw with their toppings because they really look like their kakanin counterparts—only in round blob shapes instead of their usual appearances —and when you take spoonfuls, they really taste like the OGs.
The third Christmas ice cream flavor is yet another curiosity: Itlog na Maalat. The ice cream is white, with specks of yellow, but when a spoonful melts in your mouth, it’s pure salted egg magic — and you won’t put that cup down until it’s fully consumed.
The fourth flavor is Crema de Fruta, which is pound cake ice cream decorated with spheres of peach, pineapple, and maraschino cherry sorbets.
Sebastian’s also added four items to its roster of ice cream cakes, but just for the season. Of course, its seasonal offerings, Puto Bumbong Deluxe (layers of Puto Bumbong Cake and Puto Bumbong Ice Cream, topped with grated coconut and muscovado toffee crisp) and Bibingka Espesyal (layers of rice cake, Queso de Bola Ice Cream, and a new Itlog na Maalat Ice Cream layer), are back for Christmas. These come with two new creations—Queso de Bola King (layers of Queso de Bola Cake and Queso de Bola Ice Cream, topped with Queso de Bola cheese crisps) and Siete Leche (layers of Tres Leches Cake, Dulce de Leche Ice Cream, Pastillas de Leche Ice Cream, and Leche Flan, topped with condensed milk crumble).
An entirely new concept that Sebastian’s introduced in its Christmas 2023 Collection is the Crispwich. It’s an all-new line of ice cream sandwiches using Queso de Bola crisps, which are made by baking freshly grated Queso de Bola in the oven to form wafer-thin rounds of pure cheese with a delicate crisp texture and deep toasted flavor. Two discs are filled with Pinoy ice cream flavors that go well with cheese—Gatas, Ube, Mantecado, and Peach Mango Pie. So, four variants of an awesome flavor-and-texture perfect Crispwich.
The Christmas ice cream flavors are available per scoop at Sebastian’s store at The Podium and per pint via its online store (sebastiansicecream.com). Cake slices can be bought from the store while whole cakes have to be ordered online. The Crispwiches are available both at the store and online.