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Among the desserts, you'll find being sold on the streets of the Philippines are Halo-Halo, Taho and Iskrambol. I daresay that these desserts are just as popular as your standard dirty ice cream. In the Philippines, why should you stop at ice cream when you can have cold and hot desserts coming to your doorstep
What makes the Philippines so special for most of us growing up is the street food, or in this case, the sweet treats. Back home, there'll be a vendor or two who'll be around almost every hour or so to nourish our sweet tooth (and it won't just be ice cream they'll be selling). Instead of us going to them, they'll come to us. And whether they'll come strolling through with buckets or pushing a cart, for sure there'll be something for everyone.
THE ANATOMY OF HALO-HALO, TAHO & ISKRAMBOL
HALO - HALO.
Halo-halo means mix-mix in English. Halo-halo is a shaved ice dessert with ingredients such as kaong, nata de coco, macapuno strings, langka, red bean, ube ice cream, leche flan and pinipig. Evaporated milk is used to sweeten and cream the dessert. You should mix this entire concoction together before consuming. The ingredients for a halo-halo dessert can vary depending on one's taste, but this version tends to be the most common version.
TAHO
This may be the simplest recipe yet on this list today, but believe you me, this is the most delicious out of the three. It's literally the epitome of a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day.
Taho much like the Chinese snack "douhua", is fundamentally a tofu-based dessert. The warm silken tofu is usually served with sago or tapioca pearls and brown sugar syrup.
IKSRAMBOL
Otherwise known as "ice skrambol", iskrambol is another Filipino street dessert novelty. This dessert too contains shaved ice and evaporated milk. However, what makes this different from a halo-halo is that instead of containing the fruit and jelly ingredients, it has powdered milk, sugar, banana extract and food colouring - usually pink. An iksrambol then comes topped with marshmallows, sprinkles and often - chocolate sauuucceeee! Which you then have to scramble all together before eating or even drinking out of a straw.
Don't you just miss the Philippines just hearing about these desserts? Or if it is the first time you're hearing about these, I'm sorry to hear that you've been missing out. But regardless if you've had it before or not, these desserts can definitely be made at home! Although an ice crusher might be hard to come by, if you have a super-powerful blender or food processor, crushing ice will be a breeze for a halo-halo or iskrambol. If you don't have anything of the sort, then perhaps stick to Taho for now - it will surely keep you warm this coming winter. Though what is your favourite street dessert from the Philippines?
We have one more week left of our STREETS OF THE PHILIPPINES topic for September. So stay updated or submit your own version of the theme on our IG @malyaritribe.
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