Taste The Bahamas Through our Desserts
When you arrive home from a trip, what do you tell your friends about? We bet it’s your favorite meals.
Nothing connects us to a destination quite like the food. Certain bites root us in a place whether because of the ingredients, the quality of the execution or what we were doing when we ate it. Our Executive Pastry Chef, Louise English, understands how important those taste memories are for our guests. Her menu of desserts are purely Bahamian—and delicious.
These are some current favorites at Freedom Restaurant.
Rum has a long history in the Bahamas, one that dates back to the 1600s and involves tales of piracy and Prohibition. (Ever heard the phrase “rum-running?”) Our shores are also flanked with coconut palms, making the ingredient a staple in local diets. Louise combined the two in a homemade rum-raisin-and-coconut ice cream sandwich.
Coconuts, from the trees that line the Cove’s two beaches, also inspired Louise’s coconut panna cotta. The custard is topped with fresh fruit (including star fruit from Miss Angie’s garden!), homemade meringue, toasted coconut and a swirl of mango sorbet.
Guava duff is widely considered the national dessert of the Bahamas. Fresh guavas—a local favorite—are simmered with cinnamon, sugar and allspice to create a filling that’s wrapped up in dough balls. The sweet packages are then boiled before being topped with dollops of brandy butter and finely chopped guava. The beloved treat’s flavor profile is replicated in our Baked Cheesecake: a spiced Graham cracker base is layered with brandy butter cheesecake and then topped with fresh guava sorbet. The result is tangy, creamy and belly-warming, just like the original.
Gregory Town grows the sweetest pineapple on the planet, and pineapple tarts are very popular. Louise’s play on the ubiquitous treat is a pineapple crumble. A coconut and oat crust is loaded with chunky, cinnamon-dusted pineapple and topped with honeycomb, salted caramel and paired with cinnamon ice cream.
Fresh sorbets are made daily from in-season fruits, including lime, pineapple, papaya and tamarind, which grows locally.
Which one will you try first?