This Gungahlin baker is quietly serving some of Canberra’s most interesting desserts

Sharon May Maranan bakes a mean cookie. Once you’ve had her fudgy Filipino crinkle cookie, you’ll wonder where they’ve been your whole life. Not too sweet, not too crunchy and just the right amount of squidge.

She doesn’t stop at crinkle cookies either. Each week, she fills the cabinets at Sharon May’s Filipino Cuisine in Gungahlin with a rotating spread of desserts, from vibrant purple flans to rich cheesecakes and chewy steamed treats.

Sharon knows her way around Filipino sweets. Her family is from Pampanga, a region of the Philippines famed for its cooks.

“Baking these Filipino treats allows me to celebrate my roots and share a piece of the Philippines with others. It’s a way of honouring the flavours I grew up with, the meals shared with loved ones, and the joy that Filipino food brings to every gathering,” Sharon tells Region.

In Canberra, we’re lucky to have events like the National Multicultural Festival, but it can also mean we wait for that once-a-year excuse to try something new. At Sharon May’s, with cabinets full of desserts rarely seen outside the Philippines, there’s no need to wait.

With Sharon’s guidance, I recently dived in, and found a dessert culture unlike any other.

Filipino sweets are a fascinating look into a culture that’s often referred to as a ‘melting pot’. Through immigration and occupation, the Philippines has retained little morsels from here and there, amalgamating them with their own food culture to create something entirely new.

The Spanish brought dairy, eggs and oven-baking. The Chinese brought the glutinous textures and steaming techniques. The Americans brought ice-based desserts, and from across Southeast Asia came pandan and coconut cooking traditions.

Layer those influences with ube, the vividly purple yam that defines many Filipino desserts, and you get creations that feel both familiar and entirely new.

Take Sharon’s ube flan, a standout and one of her best-sellers. It’s a hybrid of cake and flan, steamed together into a soft, richly textured dessert. Then there’s the ube macapuno: a light chiffon cake tinted violet and topped with ube frosting and sweet strands of young coconut.

Being well-known in the Canberra Filipino community for her cakes, Sharon’s dulce de leche cake is another standout and the perfect example of her dedication to baking that got her where she is, stating that it took a lot of persistence to master her craft as a self-taught baker.

Beyond the cakes and cookies are desserts that push further from the familiar. Kutsinta, for example, is a soft, slightly chewy steamed cake with a subtle sweetness, finished with fresh-grated coconut. It’s a different kind of dessert experience for me and exactly the kind Sharon hopes to share. Through that one dessert, she’s brought me into her world, to the place she grew up and into the dishes she’s spent a lifetime enjoying with her family and friends.

“Each dessert carries not only its taste but also the warmth, stories and heart of Filipino culture,” Sharon explains.

There’s far more on offer in Sharon’s sweets cabinets than can fit in one visit. She has a large repertoire that she whips up weekly, not only for the restaurant but also for private cake commissions, all while juggling a full-time job and raising two kids.

My advice to you is to head over to Sharon May’s, settle in for something savoury, and don’t skip the Cebu lechon; this suckling pig dish is a standout on the menu, and then take home a selection of desserts, all packaged up and ready to go. It’s a small way to connect not only with Sharon and her family, but the community she’s built around her, and a reminder that you don’t need to wait for a festival to discover something new.

Sharon May’s Filipino Cuisine is located at 3/5 Hibberson Street, Gungahlin, and they’re open for lunch and dinner from Wednesday to Sunday.

Original Article published by Tenele Conway on Region Canberra.

Make us preferred on Google