Southeast Asia's favourite cold dessert

Cendol

Wriggly green pandan jelly. Cold coconut milk. Dark palm sugar syrup. A mound of shaved ice that has been cooling down the tropics for generations.

Explore the bowl ↓ How it's made

What is it?

A bowl of green, white and brown — and a whole region's childhood.

Cendol is a shaved-ice dessert built around one very recognisable thing: little green worms of jelly. They're made from rice flour and mung bean starch, coloured and perfumed with pandan leaves, then pushed through a sieve into cold water so they set into glossy, slippery strands.

Everything else is layering. A generous pour of coconut milk. A spoonful of gula melaka — palm sugar boiled down until it's almost black and tastes of caramel and smoke. Sometimes red beans, sometimes jackfruit, sometimes durian. Then ice, and a spoon.

If you grew up in Southeast Asia, the sound of a cendol cart is the sound of a hot afternoon being solved.

It belongs to the same family as other shaved-ice desserts across Asia, but the pandan jelly makes it unmistakable. And because it's assembled in seconds from ingredients that keep well, it travels easily — from a hawker stall in Penang to a night market in Java to a food court in Singapore.

What's in it

Four ingredients, and then whatever you like.

A proper cendol is not complicated. The magic is in the balance — something green and chewy, something cold and creamy, something dark and sweet.

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Pandan

Screwpine leaves, steeped for colour and a grassy, vanilla-adjacent aroma. It's the flavour people mean when they say something "tastes like cendol".

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Rice flour & mung bean starch

The base of the jelly. Rice flour for softness, mung bean starch for that signature slippery, springy chew.

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Coconut milk

Freshly squeezed from grated coconut, with a pinch of salt to keep it from tasting flat. It's poured, not drizzled.

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Gula melaka

Dark palm sugar, melted with a knotted pandan leaf until thick and smoky. This is the part that makes or breaks a bowl.

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Shaved ice

Fine as snow, packed into a mound. It's the whole reason cendol exists in the tropics.

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Red beans

Soft, faintly sweet kidney or mung beans. Not compulsory, but they give the bowl something to chew against the ice.

One dessert, many names

How Southeast Asia makes it.

Cross a border and the name changes, the toppings change, and sometimes the jelly itself changes colour. Pick a place.

Malaysia

Cendol · Chendol

Malaysia's version is arguably the most famous, and Penang is its capital. Along Penang Road you'll find stalls that have been serving essentially the same bowl for decades: green jelly, red beans, a mound of shaved ice, and a very heavy hand with the gula melaka.

What sets it apart is the syrup. Malaysian cendol is dark, almost bitter-sweet, and it streaks down through the ice in ribbons rather than dissolving into it. The result is a bowl that gets better as you dig.

What makes it different

Cendol pulut — served over a bed of glutinous rice
Cendol durian — a scoop of durian flesh on top
Gula melaka poured generously, often at the table
Red beans as the default topping

Indonesia

Dawet · Es Cendol

In Java the dessert is usually called dawet, and it's sold from pushcarts, at night markets and in warungs. Jakarta's es cendol is often blended into a drink and served in a glass with a straw, while Central Java's dawet ayu is a bowl of pure, uncluttered refreshment.

Indonesian versions lean into texture and aroma — jackfruit, fermented cassava, coconut milk that's slightly saltier, and jelly that's a little softer.

What makes it different

Dawet ayu — from Banjarnegara, simple and clean-tasting
Dawet ireng — black jelly made with burnt rice-stalk ash
Jackfruit (nangka) and fermented cassava are common
Often served as a drink rather than a dessert

Singapore

Chendol

Spelled with an "h", Singapore's chendol is a hawker-centre staple and a Peranakan classic. It tends to be sweeter and more crowded than the Malaysian version — a full bowl of ice with several toppings layered through it.

It's the natural finish to a meal of laksa or char kway teow: cold, sweet and loud with texture.

What makes it different

Sold in almost every hawker centre and food court
Sweet corn is a common topping alongside red beans
Attap chee — palm seeds — sometimes added
Typically sweeter and icier than the Malaysian bowl

Thailand

Lot chong · Lod chong

In Thailand the jelly is called lot chong — literally "through the holes", after the way the strands are made. It's often served simply, in a bowl with coconut milk and syrup, no ice at all.

The full shaved-ice version is nam kang sai, where you choose your toppings from a glass case the way you'd build a sundae.

What makes it different

Lot chong nam kati — jelly in coconut milk, served cool
Nam kang sai — the shaved-ice version with mix-and-match toppings
Jackfruit and basil seeds are common additions
Sometimes dyed with butterfly pea for a blue version

Vietnam

Chè bánh lọt

Vietnamese bánh lọt is the same pandan jelly, but here it's usually served as a chè — a sweet dessert soup in a glass or bowl, layered with coconut milk and mung bean paste.

Texture is the whole point: slippery jelly, creamy coconut, grainy bean paste, all eaten with a spoon from the bottom up.

What makes it different

Served as a chè — a sweet soup rather than a shaved-ice dessert
Layered with mung bean paste and thick coconut milk
Often eaten from a glass
Frequently made at home rather than bought from stalls

Myanmar

Mont lat saung

Myanmar's shaved-ice dessert takes the same idea and pushes it further: coconut milk, jelly, syrup — and often bread, sago or falooda-style noodles stirred through it. It's a drink, a dessert and a snack at once.

What makes it different

Shaved ice with coconut milk and rose or jaggery syrup
Frequently includes bread, sago or vermicelli
A classic street-stall order on a hot afternoon
Toppings vary enormously from stall to stall

From leaf to bowl

How cendol is made.

The whole thing takes about an hour of work — and about ninety seconds to eat.

Steep the pandan

Pandan leaves are blended with water and strained, or gently simmered, to make a deep green, intensely fragrant liquid. This does double duty: colour and aroma.

Cook the batter

Rice flour and mung bean starch are whisked into the pandan water and cooked over low heat until the mixture turns thick, glossy and slightly translucent.

Push it through the holes

The warm paste goes into a cendol press — or a perforated ladle — and is pushed through into a bath of ice water. It sets on contact, forming those wriggly little worms.

Boil the gula melaka

Palm sugar is melted with a splash of water and a knotted pandan leaf until it turns dark, thick and smoky. Strain it, and let it cool to a slow pour.

Squeeze the coconut milk

Fresh grated coconut is squeezed with water for the first, richest press. A pinch of salt goes in — not to make it salty, but to make the coconut taste more like itself.

Build the bowl

Jelly first, then beans, then a mound of shaved ice, then coconut milk, then the gula melaka poured over the top so it streaks down through the ice. Eat immediately — it waits for nobody.

Good to know

A few things worth knowing about cendol.

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The name is about the shape

Cendol likely comes from the Javanese jendol, meaning swollen or bumpy — a nod to those wriggly little worms.

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"Through the holes"

The Thai name lot chong literally means "through the holes" — a description of exactly how the strands are formed.

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Sometimes it's a drink

In Indonesia, es cendol is often served in a tall glass with a straw — more drink than dessert, and just as refreshing.

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Durian makes an appearance

Cendol durian, with a scoop of the famously pungent fruit on top, is beloved — and deeply divisive — in Malaysia and Indonesia.

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Pandan does the heavy lifting

Pandan, or screwpine, gives cendol its colour and its grassy aroma. It's the same leaf used in rice, cakes and curries across the region.

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It melts fast

Cendol is assembled and eaten within minutes. There's no making it ahead, and no sitting around once it's in front of you.