Craving Halo-Halo

What is Halo-Halo? Halo-Halo is a Filipino dessert consisting of Coconut Gel, Red Mung Beans, White Beans, Sugar Palm Fruit, Jackfruit, Macapuno (Gelatinous Coconut Strings) mixed with shaved ice, ice cream, and milk. Instead of buying the ingredients separately, there are bottles of Halo-Halo mixtures that can be purchased at a local Asian market (hopefully) along with an ice shaving machine, which is needed for making shaved ice, an other key ingredient. One bottle serves two. Finding this bottle in a market where its workers may not understand what you’re saying is the hard part, making the Halo-Halo is the easy part. First we add the Halo-Halo mix, then the shaved ice, then the ice cream, then milk. If you’re like me, I prefer good ol’ fashioned vanilla ice cream; however, coconut, cantaloupe, mango, and ube flavored ice cream are all other great choices to give this dessert a more tropical taste. Regular, soy, almond or skim milk makes this treat plenty sweet, but adding condensed milk is also an option. While this dessert looks a like a drink, it’s eaten (and usually devoured by cravy individuals) with a spoon. Soooooo gooood!