Halo-Halo: Perfect for a Summer Dessert

Fruits and shaved ice mixed all together with evaporated milk is a Philippines best Summer dessert in this tropical country. It is well-known and is everyone's favorite dessert. How do I know? I'm a Filipino and I loved digging in into this dessert specially on Summers hot weather. Anyone can make it.

Halo-halo literally means mix-mix, repeated twice. This is how to eat this dessert, mixing all ingredients well before digging in. Any fruits would do as an ingredient for halo-halo. And, you can make a simple one with any available fruits in your kitchen or a special one for a special occasion, or for a special loved one.

A special halo-halo has all of the ingredients needed into it. To make this you will need a ripe mango, jackfruit, shredded coconut, shredded cantaloup, sweet palm fruit, red mung beans, purple yam, coconut gelatin ( known as nata de coco), most gelatin used for halo-halo are green and red gelatins, and you will need pounded dried rice. Place 1 tablespoons of each ingredients on the bottom of a tall sundae glass, or a bowl. It is also your choice if you want to add more ingredients in your sundae glass than the other. Some would prefer to have more scoops of shredded coconut than ripe mango. Then top it with shaved ice and evaporated milk. It is also more yummy if a scoop of vanilla ice cream is added on top as the last ingredient. You can also used your favorite icecream flavor if you don't like vanilla. Mix all ingredients very well before eating. The mixing process of all ingredients is a little bit of challenge being careful not to spill the ingredients from your sundae glass.

To make a simplier halo-halo with lesser ingredients, you can used corn, plantain, banana, strawberries and any other fruits in your kitchen as a substitute to some of the special ingredients such as coconut, red mung bean, and pounded dried rice. Then follow the same steps, putting tablespoons of each ingredients on the sundae glass's bottom, shaved ice, and evaporated milk. Adding a scoop of ice cream on the very top is up to you but it would add a great taste to a simplier halo-halo.

Most of these ingredients are already bottled specifically and ready to be used for making halo-halo. These bottled ingredients are mung beans, the shredded coconut, purple yam, sweet palm fruit, and coconut gelatin which is known as nata de coco and all of these are mostly sold on Asian stores. If living in US, these ingredients can be found on Seafood City which is a Filipino store and have all of these ingredients for making halo-halo. On shaved ice, an electric ice cube shaver can be used which makes the work easier rather than using a manually metal ice shaver for a block of ice.

There's nothing more refreshing enjoying a glass of a halo-halo on a hot Summer day.