Rosquillos

We can never talk about Liloan if we don't mention the mouth-watering and sweet-tasting cookie called rosquillos from Titay's. For many Cebuanos, Liloan is even synonymous to rosquillos. If Carcar has ampao and "itlog mo noy orange", Liloan's perennial pride has been the rosquillos. The truth of the matter is that when Liloan joined Pasigarbo Sa Sugbo's Festival of Festivals, the town showcased its uniqueness and pride by featuring the Rosquillos Festival to all onlookers.



Rosquillos is a cookie curiously shaped as ringlets. The Spanish word “rosca” means ringlet. The ingredients for rosquillos include flour, egg, sugar, shortening and baking powder. But many people have felt that there must be a secret ingredient why rosquillos tastes so good.



Titay’s Rosquillos traces its roots all the way to 1907 (the year before UP’s founding), when Margarita “Na Titay” Frasco one day got bored and started experimenting with her baking ingredients and all of a sudden made her new culinary creation. Like a real scientist, Na Titay used her neighbors and passerby as lab rats who were offered the snack as a freebie for every purchase of a bottle of soda. The yet-to-be-named cookie was “baptized” by then Cebu governor Sergio Osmeña, Sr., who called it rosquillos in reference to the Spanish wine ring cookie known as Rosquillos de Vino.


After more than a century of home baking tradition, the patented secret family recipe has been passed on to the next Frasco generations paving the way for Titay’s to continue making delicious and one of a kind rosquillos. People going to northern Cebu have made it a habit to drop by her store to buy and enjoy the rosquillos. Titay’s Rosquillos gains the prestige of being known domestically and internationally. For foreign nationals who want to get a taste of rosquillos, most Filipino stores abroad have a display of this cookie wunderkind.

While Titay’s is synonymous with rosquillos, the family baking business has expanded to an array of homemade delicacies ranging from galletas de bato, torta, peñato, binangkal, polvoron, mamon, monay, otap, caycay, CPA (chicken pork adobo), bao-bao, elorde and a lot more mouth-watering pastries.

But before you taste other different animals, you got to try out rosquillos first for its charming tongue treat. And because rosquillos recipe can never be replicated in any other home than Liloan.

Street Businesses in Liloan

It is normally in the poblacion area of small towns where all sorts of commerce converge and human activities mingle. Liloan is no exception except that the town’s poblacion area is, by all definitions, a truly one-stop-has-it-all.

If you stand at the town rotunda (there’s a lighthouse replica in the middle), you will be surrounded by the plaza; municipal hall; the Liloan Church; gymnasium; and perhaps the biggest private school of Liloan (La Consolacion College). The Liloan Public Market, beach area, Balay Pilapil, sizable tennis court, and Suba Channel are all few walks away.

All around the poblacion teems with street businesses of all colors and sizes. For gastronomic needs, you won’t encounter any problem at all. Let the pictures tell you about what’s a cooking in Liloan’s main thoroughfare… from yummy halo-halo to motorcycles to little pizza stall to peanuts to fresh fruits to native rice delicacies known as "pa-init" to chicharon to Jollibee to lechon manok… ahh… Liloan... a place like no other!