Why hello there, halo-halo…

Ever heard of halo-halo? I hadn't until Andrew and I started comparing summertime treats from our childhood. I grew up on a variety of frozen coconut goodies: limber, paletas, helado de coco. Luckily, living in Chicago's Puerto Rican neighborhood, it's really easy to find at least one of those at any given moment. All we have to do is walk over to the park to find a vendor, but halo-halo is a totally different story...


Look at how beautiful it is. I just had to try making it but without an ice shaver, I had to find an alternate route. Thanks to chow.com, that meant popsicles! They seemed so easy to make, I dove right in after a trip to our local Korean market.


I'd never seen ube yams but they are the g-r-e-a-t-e-s-t shade of purple. Watching the grated ube dissolve into the cream was so pretty, too.


Prepping the halo-halo part was super fun (it means mix-mix, so duh, of course it was fun). We used a mix of mung beans, white beans, ripe banana, jackfruit, mango, shredded coconut, nata de coco, and evaporated milk. Traditionally there's a mix of a ton more but we had to minimize so our molds could hold it all.


After draining all of the fruit and beginning to chop everything up, I got an adorable surprise. Look at how cute the ripe banana's little happy faces were.


I made about a million (ok, more like 22) for Andrew's father's birthday/father's day party. Admittedly, I was a little nervous about how they'd respond to my take on their traditional Filipino dessert but everybody loved them, even the kids!

We now have a freezer full of another batch because they're too delicious not to?

I'll be trying out some limber next, though I'll be upgrading from the usual small dixie cups. Yay, summer! Yay, popsicles! Excuse me while I go eat another...