Halo-Halo, A Mix of Flavors
Halo-Halo is a Filipino dessert that literally means mixed. It is made up of a variety of sweetened fruits, jellies, flans, jams, anything you can probably think of. It would be topped with ice shavings and then evaporated milk. Special halo-halo is further topped with a scoop or two of ice cream. Sweet eh?!
Back in the Philippines, my auntie has been selling halo-halo for years. As soon as the calendar turns its leaf to the 1st of March, she would be ready with her jars of sweetened fruits, jellies, and whatnots. The neighbors, as if receiving an automated notification (mind you, these were not yet a thing in the '90's) would flock the front of her yard where she set up her shop. My cousins and I would stay there up to the end of the day, wishing there would be leftover ingredients so we could have our own halo-halo for free.
Meanwhile, the sun here in the desert is scorching hot and it just seems appropriate to make a dessert that would cool us down and take us back to the Philippines even for just a few minutes. While I debated ordering online vs making it at home, I already knew what I really had to do. Why did I even try to check out that online menu?
Homemade Halo-Halo
Luckily, it is not too hard to find halo-halo ingredients here in the UAE. There is an abundance of Filipino stores that even the evaporated milk would be "proudly Pinoy".
One can opt to buy separate jars of sweetened fruits like jackfruit, nata de coco (coconut gel), macapuno (coconut sports), kaong (sugar palm fruit), but I opted to buy the jar with mixed ingredients already. Additionally, I also got a jar of ube or purple yam. With a couple of sweetened plantain bananas and jelly, and we are good to go!
The ingredients are already sweet so adding more sugar wouldn't be necessary. Not to mention that the ube topping is also sweet.
Asking why the ube needs to be on top? Hmm, I'd say it would normally be for aesthetic purposes since the whole thing would have to be mixed together anyway.
While I struggled getting crushed ice - I think my blender already needs to retire - it still ended up well and really satisfied the whole fam.
The mid-afternoon snack/dessert actually ended up as our dinner as well because we were too full to even think about eating that night.
