Hello HALO-HALO: It’s Officially Summer in the Philippines! :)

Posted on by Kate Adajar

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Here in the Philippines, the moment you see a sudden increase of ice cream commercials on TV, you’ll realize it’s officially summer! 🙂 Aside from hitting the lovely beaches in the country,  eating cold desserts is something to look forward to (at least for me. Hihihi). One of the most popular local cold desserts is the HALO-HALO [haˈlo-haˈlo] (which literally means mixed together).

As Wikipedia described it, halo-halo is a popular Filipino dessert made out of shaved ice and evaporated milk  mixed with various ingredients like  boiled sweet beans, jello or gelatin garbanzos,  sugar palm fruit (kaong), coconut sport (macapuno), plantains caramelized in sugar, jackfruit (langkâ), gulaman, tapioca, nata de coco, sweet potato (camote), cheese, pounded crushed young rice (pinipig). Most of the ingredients (fruits, beans, and other sweets) are first placed inside the tall glass, followed by the shaved ice. This is then sprinkled with sugar, and topped with either (or a combination of) leche flan (custard), and purple yam (ubeng pula). Evaporated milk is poured into the mixture upon serving. For a “special” version of the dessert, a scoop of ice cream (often flavored ube or purple yam) is added on top! 🙂 

Interestingly, halo-halo is now an ice cream flavor here! Look at the photo below. Haha, the goodness of two of my favorites combined!!! (Can you sense my joy? Haha. Oink! Oink!) Happy summer, guys! 😉 –Kate 🙂

Halo-Halo Selecta ice cream
This was a stolen shot during my last grocery shopping! 🙂

 

PS: Oops, just to add to my feature, there’s this popular halo-halo variant here sold for approximately US$2-3 that I (and others I know) super love — Razon’s halo-halo. It only has a few ingredients (sweetend plantains, sweetened coconut strips, leche flan or caramel custard, evaporated milk, shaved iced <SUPER FINE!!!!>, and sugar syrup) but the moment you put the mixture inside your mouth, you’re in for a surprise (like, weight gain in a few days!). 😛

Here’s a photo I got from my old files. This was taken last year during a date with my mom. 🙂

NOTE TO CARO: You and Renato are so having this when you come over! 🙂

PPS: Even master foodie Anthony Bourdain got to try halo-halo! The one he tried was a bit Americanized because it was sold in the US. 🙂 WATCH here: