Pili Nuts substitute

Best substitute

Macadamia nuts

Use the same amount as the pili nuts you are replacing

Best for pili nut tart and Filipino sweets

Different texture

Pili is doing fat, mild sweetness and a soft creamy bite, not crunch and not a strong nutty flavour, so the substitute has to be a soft high-fat nut rather than a hard one. Macadamia nuts are the closest thing available anywhere and swap 1:1, being similarly buttery and only slightly firmer and sweeter. Raw cashews are the next best and much cheaper, a shade starchier and less rich. Blanched almonds and pine nuts both work if you accept a firmer bite or a resinous edge respectively. For keto cooking, macadamia is also the closest on macros; cashews are considerably higher in carbohydrate, so they are not an equivalent swap on that count.

Other pili nuts substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Raw cashews
Close match
Use the same amount
The practical everyday answer, and roughly a third of the price.
What changes
Cashews are soft, pale and mild, which is exactly the pili profile, and they blend to a smooth paste with the same silky richness. They are noticeably less fatty and slightly starchy, so a candied nut or a brittle made with cashews tastes a little chalkier and less melting, and a cashew crust is less rich. They are also far higher in carbohydrate than pili nuts, so on a strict keto recipe they are not an equivalent.
Best for
candied and spiced nuts, nut pastes and fillings, cookies and tarts, savoury sauces
Toast them lightly to deepen the flavour, but stop early; cashews go from golden to burnt very quickly.
3Blanched almonds
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount
Available everywhere and structurally reliable, but the crunch is the difference: almonds are hard and snappy where pili is soft and yielding, so a nut cookie or a brittle made with them eats crisp and toothsome rather than tender.
What changes
Flavour is cleanly nutty and slightly bitter-sweet, which suits sweet baking well. Use blanched rather than skin-on, since the skins add tannic bitterness and dark flecks that look wrong in a pale Filipino sweet. Ground almonds also work anywhere pili was ground.
Best for
tarts and cookies, nut brittle, praline and mazapan-style sweets, crusts
Soaking blanched almonds in hot water for an hour softens them closer to pili's texture if that matters.
4Pine nuts
Different taste
Use the same amount
Good on texture, distinctive on flavour.
What changes
Pine nuts are among the few nuts as soft and buttery as pili, so the mouthfeel is right and they melt in the same way. What they bring that pili does not is a resinous, slightly piney taste that is unmistakable, so anything made with them reads as pine nut rather than as a neutral buttery nut. That is fine in savoury dishes and fine in a rich tart, less good in a delicate sweet where you wanted the nut to stay in the background.
Best for
savoury dishes and fillings, tarts, toasted garnish, nut pastes
They are as expensive as pili nuts in most places, so use them for flavour reasons rather than to save money.
5Brazil nuts or shelled hazelnuts
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount
Both are high enough in fat to fill the same role but neither is a quiet nut.
What changes
Brazil nuts are the closer of the two on richness and softness, with a faintly milky, slightly sulphurous flavour that gets stronger the longer they sit, so use fresh ones. Hazelnuts are firmer and toast to a strong, sweet, unmistakably hazelnut character that will dominate whatever you put it in. Rub the skins off toasted hazelnuts in a tea towel first, or the result is bitter and speckled.
Best for
brittle and praline, chocolate desserts, cookies, nut butters
Brazil nuts go rancid faster than most nuts; taste one before committing a whole recipe to them.
6Pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds (nut-free option)
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount
Honest framing: this is not close, it is the least-bad nut-free option.
What changes
Seeds have far less fat than pili nuts, so nothing made with them will taste rich in the same way, and pumpkin seeds bring a green, vegetal flavour and a distinctly chewy bite. They do toast well and they hold up in brittle, granola and crusts, where their job is texture and toastiness rather than butteriness. Add a teaspoon of coconut oil or butter per half cup to put some of the missing fat back.
Best for
nut-free brittle and bars, granola, crusts and toppings, savoury garnish
Buy raw and unsalted, and toast them yourself in a dry pan until they start to pop.

What is Pili Nuts?

Pili Nuts is Pili nuts are the kernels of Canarium ovatum, a tree native to the Philippines, sold raw or roasted as a soft, pale, very buttery nut that is milder and creamier than a macadamia and is popular both in Bicolano sweets and in keto cooking because it is unusually high in fat and low in carbohydrate.

Cooking tips

Pili nuts are sold both raw and roasted, and the raw kernels are much softer and milder. If a recipe calls for roasted pili and you are substituting, toast your macadamias or cashews in a dry pan or a 325 F oven for six to eight minutes first, because that toasted sweetness is a large part of what the recipe expects.
Because pili nuts are very high in fat, they turn to a smooth paste in a food processor faster than most nuts and will go past crumbs into butter in seconds. Pulse rather than run the machine, and the same caution applies to macadamias.
Fat that high also means they go rancid quickly. Keep pili nuts, macadamias and Brazil nuts in the fridge or freezer rather than a cupboard, and smell them before use; a stale nut will ruin a whole batch of anything.
In Filipino sweets such as pili tart, pili brittle and mazapan de pili, the nut supplies both the fat and the structure, so a low-fat substitute like seeds will not set or bind the same way. Stay with macadamia, cashew or almond for those recipes.
For keto and low-carb baking, pili and macadamia are the two lowest-carbohydrate nuts in common use. Cashews are much higher, so swapping cashews in will change the macros of the recipe substantially even though the texture works fine.

Frequently asked questions

Can I just leave the pili nuts out?

It depends whether they are the ingredient or a garnish. Scattered over a dessert or stirred into granola, they can simply be omitted with no problem beyond losing crunch and richness. In a pili nut tart, a brittle, a nut paste or a keto fat bomb, the nuts are the fat and the body of the recipe and there is nothing left without them, so you need to replace the same volume with another nut. Macadamia or cashew at 1:1 is the straightforward answer.

What do pili nuts taste like?

Very mild and very buttery. Raw, they are soft, faintly sweet and creamy, closer to a pine nut or a very fresh macadamia than to an almond, with none of the bitterness or tannin many nuts have. Roasted, they deepen into something noticeably sweeter and more like macadamia. The texture is what people remember: they yield rather than crunch, which is why hard nuts feel like a bigger change than the flavour swap suggests.

Are pili nuts and macadamia nuts interchangeable?

Yes, in either direction, at 1:1, and they are the standard substitute for each other. Macadamias are crunchier, slightly sweeter and more strongly nutty; pili are softer and more neutral. Both are pale, both are very high in fat, both toast well, and both have similar low-carbohydrate profiles, so recipes written for one work with the other with no adjustment to quantities or timing.

Where can I buy pili nuts, and why are they so expensive?

Filipino and Southeast Asian groceries carry them, usually roasted and sometimes candied, and online sellers stock raw keto-marketed kernels. They cost what they do because the shell is extremely hard and the nuts are shelled by hand, and because the tree is grown commercially in only a few regions, mainly Bicol in the Philippines. If cost is the reason you are looking for a substitute, cashews are the sensible answer and macadamias the closest.

Can I use pili nut butter instead of whole pili nuts?

For anything where the nuts get ground anyway, such as a paste, a filling or a fat bomb, yes, and roughly a cup of whole nuts becomes about three quarters of a cup of butter. For a brittle, a tart with visible nuts, or a topping, no, because you lose the pieces entirely and the extra oil will change how the mixture sets. The same is true of macadamia or cashew butter used as a stand-in.

Related substitutes

More nuts & seeds substitutes

Pili Nuts substitute

Other pili nuts substitutes

2Raw cashews

3Blanched almonds

4Pine nuts

5Brazil nuts or shelled hazelnuts

6Pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds (nut-free option)