Salamat Cookies: Pinoy-flavored treats a hit in the US

Cookies with the distinctly Pinoy flavors of ube, mango, buko, and turon are making waves in Indianapolis, US!

According to Oscar Oida’s “24 Oras” report Thursday, the treats known as Salamat Cookies are the brainchild of Filipino-American photographer Michael “Mike” Williams and his mother Lourdes Arceo-Williams.

In May last year, when Mike began losing gigs at the start of the pandemic, he and his mom turned to baking cookies and giving them as thank-you gifts to those who helped them when they couldn’t pay for services.

“We were just handing them out as thank-you cookies. And then one day two ladies at this chiropractic office we go to, they asked, are you selling these cookies? And I was like, yup! So that’s how we really got started and that’s how we got our name Salamat Cookies, because they were just thank-you cookies at the very beginning,” said Mike.

“By that weekend we got 728 cookies ordered and not just in Indianapolis area but out of town as well,” said Lourdes.

As of today, the four of them—Mike, his mom Lourdes, and his “Tiyo Philip and Ate Melissa”—have baked over 70,000 cookies.

Asked what made their treats popular, Lourdes said it was definitely the Filipino flavor.

“All our kakanin like kutsinta, bibingka, they’re not sweet,” she said, adding that they used ingredients from the Philippines such as coco sugar, ube, mango, langka, and macapuno.

Their next target is to put up a physical store and a cookie truck to reach more customers in Indianapolis and all over US, and maybe even bring their cookies to the Philippines.

“The Philippines has helped defined me, who I am as a person. I’m just so proud and thankful that we’ve created something that is widely received,” said Mike. – RC, GMA News