The Dessert to End All Desserts

Do you have a Filipino friend? If not, then go get yourself one, because you need to ask them about this dessert. It’s called Halo-Halo and it may just be the perfect summer food.

My story begins on a hot summer’s day. My friends and I were busy playing the sport of kings - basketball - on an outdoor court, no less! Competition was fierce but we triumphed over most kids we faced in battle. But now we faced a different battle - the battle against our stomachs. All that energy spent has left us craving the perfect summer meal. We headed down to our favourite restaurant and had our fill of barbecue. But in terms of the perfect summer meal, barbecue just doesn’t cut it. It was actually the food we had afterwards.

When I think of summer foods, the obvious choice would be something cold to combat the summer heat. Ice cream springs to mind. Also, shaved ice. How about topping that shaved ice with some evaporated milk. If that isn’t sweet enough, let’s throw in some cubes of flan. Add some jiggly red gelatin for colour. Some corn flakes to give it some crunch. Beans and coconut for depth of flavour and texture. Then you’ve got yourself one epic dessert. Now multiply that by ten because the restaurant we went to made a gigantic version of the dish, enough for ten people. What you have is the dessert to end all desserts. This dessert will have you shivering even in the hottest summer heat. It’s a massive dessert that is served in a dish bigger than your head.

It was my cousin’s idea to order it and he did not intend to share. In fact, the server insisted that he share with his friends but he wouldn’t have it (she brought over extra cups and spoons). You see, he’s into food challenges and he wants to finish this ginormous dessert all by himself, probably for bragging rights (for the ‘gram, so to speak). Bigger isn’t always better but sometimes, it’s the best. My cousin started out strong but five minutes in, he started to shiver from the cold. Flashbacks of his last failed food challenge resurfaced - that time he tried to heat three stacks of the biggest pancakes we have ever seen. We offered to help him finish the halo-halo, but he wouldn’t relent. He continued to slowly chip away at it until there was just a bit of melted ice cream left at the bottom of the serving dish. The server, seeing the feat, ended up shaking her head. “You’re going to make yourself sick,” she said. Even though my cousin kept this perfect summer meal to himself, we came away with the memory of seeing this mammoth of a dessert. We will always remember the mega halo-halo.

“Halo” is the tagalog word for mix. I think the name came about because you’re supposed to mix the ingredients together with a long spoon before you can start enjoying this dessert. Otherwise, you end up with just a mouthful of plain shaved ice. You want every bite to have a bit of everything. All the flavours and textures mixing together in one spoon. There’s the crunch, the cold, the sweet, the squishy, the creamy. There’s depth to every bite - a different ratio of each ingredient with each spoonful brings a unique experience every time.

Every Filipino restaurant has their own variation of this dish but the basic ingredients (according to Wikipedia) are shaved ice, evaported milk, sugar palm fruit (kaong), coconut sport (macapuno), saba plantains cooked in syrup (minatamis na saging), jackfruit (langkâ), agar jellies (gulaman), tapioca pearls, nata de coco, sweet potato (kamote), sweetened beans, cheese, pounded toasted young rice (pinipig), and ice cream.

Sometimes, I sit and think about how someone came up with this crazy concoction. Perhaps, it was a mix of the heat, boredom, hunger and a sweet tooth that inspired it. Being Filipino, I’ve had the pleasure of trying different variations of this awesome dessert throughout my life. It has always remained (for me, at least) the most iconic summer food.