Turon with Cream Cheese

In celebration of the National Fritters Day on December 2, I made our Filipino banana fritter called “turon.”

Turon is a favorite dessert or snack here in the Philippines and to make it a little more special, I added cream cheese to the recipe. It brings me back to my childhood where I would usually buy banana fritters from my friend’s mom and snack up on it as we play under the trees in our garden.

I don’t exactly know why this is called turon in the Philippines. A turron (Spanish) or torrone (Italian) is a nougat confection made of honey, sugar, and egg white, with toasted nuts. I’m guessing it’s because of the nougat-y finish brought by the caramelized brown sugar. I somehow understand why it’s called a banana fritter. A fritter is any kind of food coated in batter and deep fried. A Filipino turon, however, uses Chinese pastry wrapper as its coating.

Ingredients (will make 2-3 fritters):

2 pcs. saba or Cardava banana/plantain
2-3 pcs. Chinese lumpia wrapper
brown sugar
cream cheese

First step is to slice the plantains into three slices per piece. Next, coat it with brown sugar. This depends on how sweet you want the fritters to turn out to be but then since I intended this as a dessert and that I’d add cream cheese later on, I decided to be liberal on the brown sugar.

Get a piece of Chinese lumpia wrapper and place two plantain slices in the middle. Get two slices of cream cheese and place one on top of each slice of plantain. Wrap them up and get ready for frying.

In a pan, heat up some oil. Sprinkle a small amount of brown sugar on the part with the open flap. The is the side that you’ll cook first so that it gets sealed as you cook. When that side has browned, sprinkle another small amount of brown sugar on the side facing you before you turn it around. The sugar will caramelize and will add a semi-burnt sweet flavor and crunchy texture to the fritter.

I love to eat it as is. The sweetness of the caramelized bananas blended well with the cream cheese. I’ve tried turon with langka or turon with purple yam jam but my turon with cream cheese is by far the best turon I’ve ever tried! You may also eat it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and go oomph with every bite 🙂