Snow Cone Syrups

I got this set of hawaiian shaved ice's snow cone syrups upon the kids' request...and guess what, the big boy (hubby) also likes it, cherry being his favorite flavor! Stepd's fave is the blue raspberry...I just ordered two sets of 3-flavor packs to replenish cherry and blue raspberry flavors.

Why hawaiian shaved ice brand? It got the best reviews on amazon.com...the other brands apparently are not packed with real flavors. We were not disappointed.

This set includes:
Banana
Watermelon
Root Beer
Lemon-Lime
Pina Colada
Grape
Cherry
Tiger's Blood (whatever that is!)
Blue Raspberry
Strawberry

UPDATE 9-5-09: During one pool party celebrating my older son's birthday, my kids had fun showing it off to friends and they all had a blast making their snow cones. Today, when celebrating his birthday with relatives, my SIL and her kids had fun making snow cones and asked me where I got the machine and the syrups. This is one of the best fun food stuff to make during summer!

Halo-halo

Longing for a taste of the Philippines on a hot summer day, after I finally encountered some yellow plantains which was suitable as substitute for saba bananas, I finally made halo-halo. I made sweetened bananas (the old-fashioned way), sweetened white camote (the same variety we have in the Philippines, instead of the orange ones. I think the white ones are sweeter.), and sweetened adzuki beans. (For making these, my technique for the banana and camote are the same: cube then boil with enough water until soft enough when you bite into a piece, about 5 minutes or so, then drain the water, put back 1/4 cup into the pot and add 2 cups of sugar and boil another 5 minutes. I choose bananas that are not too ripe, but soft enough to dent when poked. If syrup is made before adding uncooked bananas/camote, you will not get them soft enough. For the beans, I soaked the beans for about 2 hours or so, then boiled for an hour on until soft, then did the same thing with the syrup. The bad thing was, some beans were soft, some were super chewy tough! Dunno why...)[Addendum as of 8/23/09: I also made sweetened white beans and garbanzos later. I bought 1 can of each, rinsed with cold water 3 times to get rid of some saltiness, then boiled until I was satisfied they would remain soft even with the addition of syrup. Then I made the syrup by mixing 1/4 cup sugar with 2 cups water and added the softened beans and garbanzos. I placed them in jars and had to wait about 2 days before they became sweet.] I had a jar each of kaong (palm seeds) and nata de coco. I made leche flan as topping. I still have ube haleya from a previously made batch. The only things I lacked were the colored sago and gulaman (I forgot to grab some bags of sago from the Asian store, and was too lazy to look up a recipe for gulaman made with agar-agar), macapuno (could not find one!), minatamis na garbanzos (chick pea), and minatamis na langka (because I was too eager to have halo-halo! I do have some canned jackfruit which I will cook to soften).

No, I don't like ice cream on my halo-halo. Never liked it. I also never liked the big ice chips that "Iceberg" (did I remember it right?) used on their "special" halo-halo that were full of colored kaong and gulaman and hardly anything else, topped with ice cream. I liked the halo-halo I used to buy from a neighbor, with ice that is as fine as snow, over a mix (halo-halo is literally mix-mix) of a teaspoon of each ingredient, with about 1 tbsp of white sugar, some evap milk poured over the ice, topped with leche flan, which I love eating by itself, not mixed in.



My son enjoyed his with some lengua de gato. (I am still in search of a recipe that is really crispy buttery. This batch I made for the first time were too tough for my taste when they totally cooled off.)



One dilemma I had was how to come up with the scraped ice because I did not have that gadget that we use in the Philippines. I did make a block of ice the night before, and had this idea of -- don't laugh! -- using the mandolin slicer to scrape the ice. It turned out ok, though slow, and I had to keep turning the block of ice every now and then so that the markings made by the towel would provide some traction which the blade would catch. Without those, the ice would just slide and slip.



My older son, after seeing what I was doing, and finally having a taste of the halo-halo (and realizing that that taste was familiar), suggested we get a snowcone maker (what a wonderful idea! I was quite reluctant, though, because my sis used to have a manually cranked plastic ice scraper that shook so hard it threatened to fall apart, that I would have wanted the old-fashioned pangkudkod ng yelo). But doing it the mandolin way was too slow most of the ice melted right away! So eventually, I sorted through the ones available in amazon and walmart, and made my choice. I will feature that summer gadget next.

Saba Con Hielo

Another summer treat, now that I have seen some yellowish plantain bananas (thanks to elena!), I have finally made minatamis na saging myself, recipe courtesy of elena. Then since it was a hot day, I thought of turning it into saba con hielo, with the addition of crushed ice, evap milk, and some sugar to taste.

Ahhhh, it brings me back to the Philippines....

Mango Shake/Slushie

I don't really have a recipe. This is more like a slushie using a blender to crush the ice.

I used 2 mangoes (the red variety available in hannaford), about 2 cups of crushed ice (using pyrex glass measuring cup), enough water to make crushing easy (maybe about 1/2 to 1 cup), and about 1/4 cup of sugar (or to taste; just add some more if you feel like it).

I would have wanted to use the green mangoes if they were available but they are never available here...I had a taste of green mango shake back in the Philippines and was pleasantly surprised at the taste of it...tart vs sugary sweetness...it was sooo good!

Summer Nostalgic Tripping - Ube Ice Cream Sandwich

After a marathon at work last week, I baked pan de sal on the last night, because I was craving to have ube ice cream as filling in it! Yummy nostalgic food trip! (When I was a child, our family and the bakers would sometimes get this kind of tripping for freshly baked monay during summers.) Loved the contrast of hot and cold, crispy crust and melting ice cream....

I just wished someone else prepared it for me.... :( However, nakakaalis naman ng pagod after ko makain yung 2 pieces on this plate. Tsalap!

Patrick's Ice Cream Creation

My son is also quite the adventurous eater. This is how he usually likes his ice cream:

Waffle bowl
vanilla ice cream
whipped cream
chocolate sauce
maraschino cherry

Buco Pandan Salad

Another longed-for Filipino dessert...

I got ideas from oggi (but I don't have pandan leaves nor gulaman bars). I was adamant I would NOT ever use Jell-O for this classic Filipino dessert. For one thing, I never liked Jell-O gelatin. The consistency is just not the same. Too jiggly and soft for me. And they gel longer too. Plus, they come from animal sources (the collagen), while agar-agar is from a seaweed.

Anna, Celia and I wolfed our serving down hungrily. My kids looked freaked out by its color, but loved its taste.

WARNING: Eat sparingly. Loaded with cream cheese and heavy cream (kaya nga yummy!).

Ingredients and Instructions:

For the gelatin:
juice from 3 buco (young coconuts)
1 can (14 oz) pandan leaves extract (Maesri brand; sent to me by Deb -- Thanks!)
water (enough to reach 4 cups when combined with buco juice and pandan extract)
1 (20 ml) buco pandan flavor (McCormick)
4-6 tsp of agar-agar (available at amazon.com; I bought mine, an expensive brand, from Spice of Life here but seeing amazon's, I should have just ordered from them.)
1/2 cup sugar

Note: The suggested ratio of agar-agar to liquid on the back of the label was 1 tbsp agar-agar to 1 cup of liquid. I read from burntlumpia's post that he found 1 tsp in 1 cup gives the right consistency, and that 1 tbsp results in too firm a gelatin.

Let agar-agar stand in the mixture of liquids liquids for 15 minutes then start boiling together until agar-agar is dissolved completely. Try cooling a small amount in the fridge for about 3 minutes and check if you like the consistency. If not, add a little more and reheat until the agar-agar dissolves. Add sugar when agar-agar is completely melted (not sure if it would get in the way of dissolving the agar-agar so I added it last). Place in 13x9 glass pan; cover and chill until solid. Cut into cubes. Mix in the rest of the ingredients.

Shredded young coconut meat (I had very little from the 3 buco because only one of them had meat that was not mala-uhog, so I opened 2 cans of canned young coconuts pre-cut in triangles. I discarded the "buco" juice from those cans as they tasted like very diluted. The coconut meat that came from these cans were not too pleasing when eaten plain, but mixed as buco salad, they are ok. The frozen shredded are too mature for buco salad use. The freshly shredded ones are still the best.)

1 can kaong (palm seeds in heavy syrup); drained (optional; I added because I had it in my pantry, and goes well with coconut)

Creamy Sauce
1 (14 oz) can condensed milk
equal amount of heavy cream (use the can of condensed milk to measure)
6 oz cream cheese spread

Beat the cream cheese first until smooth. Add the condensed milk slowly, then the heavy cream. Pour into the gelatin and shredded young coconuts and let chill.

Tapioca Pearls (optional)
Boil 4 cups of water then add 1/2 cup of tapioca pearls. Cook for about 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Turn heat off, cover and let stand 15 minutes or until translucent. Rinse with cold water 3 times. Place in a jar then add cold water to cover and refrigerate. Add these only when serving the buco pandan salad (not sure what the effect is if you mix right away).

Note: I love placing my buco pandan in the freezer for about 30 minutes to an hour to have some ice crystals before serving.

Manang's Ube (Taro) Ice Cream

This post is dedicated to Yvette and to every Filipino who craves for ube ice cream but has no access to ready made one.

I called it Manang's Ube Ice Cream because I did not rely on others' recipe for this. I just had the idea brewing in my head for some time now, and I dare say it was one very good idea, and it was successful at satisfying my craving for an ube ice cream.

[UPDATE: 7-8-09
I was not aware that July is officially the National Ice Cream Month, until I read about the Social-Ice Cream contest on Tangled Noodle's food blog. The contest is co-hosted by ScottySnacks and SavorTheThyme. My initial thought on the matter was that, non-Filipinos would probably welcome this with mild reception, with the final product looking so plain, and the flavor unknown to most and probably will not be appreciated by anyone who is not Pinoy, who did not grow up in the Philippines. So far, that is the kind of reception it gets from my family, so I get discouraged bringing any ube-flavored Filipino food to a non-Filipino gathering. However, with TN's prodding, I figured it would not hurt to expose to the world the unique Filipino flavors, so here goes my ube ice cream post as my entry to the said contest.

For non-Filipinos, to give you a background on ube, it is the real yam, purple yam at that. Not the sweet potato that are labeled yams in the grocery stores. Filipinos and other Asians use ube on a lot of desserts, especially ice cream and cakes, probably as often as we use coconuts or sweet sticky rice.]

After our family celebrated the 4th of July here at our house, the next day was a much better day to get together and grill foods and swim in the pool, and with a lot of leftovers (uncooked hotdogs and burgers and BBQ) I called/texted out an impromptu invitation to some of my friends for a pool party. Two of my friends came. Some of the items I served were buco pandan salad and ube ice cream (I served the buco pandan salad on the 4th and nobody among my in-laws were interested in it and I made the ube ice cream the next day using leftover homemade old-fashioned vanilla ice cream (which my in-laws and hubby love soft served as in freshly churned).

Out of the 6-qt (1-1/2 gallons) recipe I made, we had about 3.5 qt (about 2 cups less than 1 gallon) leftover. Instead of putting in the freezer to harden further, I left it in the fridge to just keep it chilled, with plans to turn it into ube ice cream. I would have made a two-hour trip to the Asian stores to get some frozen grated ube, but I remembered I had two packets of powdered ube. So even though I did not really like the ube haleya made out of powdered ube, I thought maybe it would do ok when mixed into ice cream. So I made the haleya and cooked until thick but runny enough to make it easy to mix with the ice cream even when fully cold. I even placed it in the freezer for about 1 hr or so and it was still easy to scoop out and mix with the ice cream. Then I churned to make the soft ice cream, then added the rest of the ube haleya by hand. I deep froze for about 2 hrs enough to give us some hard ice cream (at the center it was still soft).

My Filipina friends' verdict? Parang Magnolia daw("It's like Magnolia's.") [To non-Filipinos, Magnolia is a famous brand of ice cream in the Philippines.]

Me: "Pwede na i-post sa foodblog ko yung recipe?" (So,I can post my recipe in my foodblog?")
Celia: "Oo! Pwedeng pwede!" ("Yes, of course!")

Celia often visits my site too for some recipes. If she does not have success in making, say, leche flan, she is lucky enough to get a chance for an actual demonstration from me (For example, I taught her how to make caramel in the microwave).

The next day my ube ice cream was very very hard I had to zap in the microwave for 1-1/2 minutes (in increments of 30 second) to easily scoop out. But it was not icy gritty at all. Not as smooth as Magnolia in my opinion, but maybe because I added too much haleya (you know how frozen haleya can get too tough). But who complains anyway of having too much real flavor into something such as this? Our usual complaint about flavored foods (ice cream, ensaymada, etc.) is not having enough of the real flavor (bitin ba), and too often loaded with the artificial flavoring. Well, this one is packed with real goodness of ube. The pandan flavor adds volumes to its goodness.

Ingredients:
1 gallon or less Old Fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream (Click to get to its recipe page; make 6 qt if you want to experiment with different flavors or just leave out some as plain)- refer to the link on how to make it. You NEED to have an ice cream maker, rock salt, and crushed ice. I have been using the Rival Ice Cream Maker for 3 years already.

Ube Haleya
1 packet powdered ube (4.06 oz)
2 cups heavy cream
2 cups milk
1 tsp pandan flavor (clear colored)
enough purple food coloring to achieve the tint as desired (both for haleya and the final ube ice cream mix)

Instructions:

Prepare the old-fashioned vanilla ice cream. Chill in the fridge good before freezing. This is your base for any flavor you want. Place the aluminum ice cream maker bucket in the freezer.

Prepare ube haleya and chill until cool enough to not melt the fat content of the heavy cream in the vanilla ice cream.

(The fat content of heavy cream, especially ultrapasteurized, plus the egg custard in the base help in emulsifying the mixture. The flour when cooked, plus the cooked ube, both help in hindering any ice lattice formation by the water content. These factors help so that the resulting ice cream will not give you ice crystals. Well, that's how I have come to understand the science behind ice cream making.)

Mix half of the ube haleya with the ice cream base. Place in the cold aluminum bucket, cover and position in the plastic outer bucket.Run the ice cream maker. Make sure the aluminum bucket is covered well before you start placing ice and rock salt around. Keep adding ice and rock salt until the motor stops running. This is the soft ice cream stage. Finish hardening the ice cream by transferring into an ice cream container and deep freezing it. Cover the top with cling wrap to avoid freezer burn if you have air space in the container.

Melon Shake

TYPE SUMMARY HERE

Ingredients:

Instructions:

Strawberry Milk Shake

"I don't even like strawberry shake, but this is delicious!" -- Husband

My kids love it!

Probably the good store-bought strawberries made a lot of difference. Seldom are we able to get really good strawberries from the store. Usually they are puckery and hard, pinkish red instead of really red. This time I got a "Limited Edition" from a "William & Anderson" farm in California (not Mexico!). We liked them eaten as is, and we love the shake made with them.

Ingredients:
16 oz strawberries
1 to 1-1/2 crushed ice
1/2 cup sugar
enough milk to reach 4 cups in the blender
4 scoops of vanilla ice cream

Instructions:

Place strawberries in the blender first, followed by sugar, then crushed ice. Pour milk to level of 4 cups, top with 4 scoops vanilla ice cream. Blend using liquefy or blend mode. Use pulse setting, pressed for about 10 seconds, if the mixing seems not to include the top part. Once it starts making a funnel, revert to liquefy or blend mode to make the mixture smoother.

Ahhhh! Sarrrrap!

In a few weeks' time, we will have the chance to get "real" strawberries...as real as picking them straight from the strawberry farms around here...not sure how sweet they will be as they have not seen sunshine in weeks! But then again, if made sweet by ice cream and sugar, or if made into jams, being tart will be a plus anyway.