Halo-halo (mix-mix) is a shaved ice dessert from the Philippines. It’s also one of the first things we suggest our non-Filipino friends try when they’re just starting to familiarize themselves with the country’s cuisine.
But instead of just tasting it, a group of British YouTubers took it upon themselves to make one too.
Sorted Food is a YouTube channel known for posting simplified versions of recipes and the halo-halo is their latest challenge.
In a video posted yesterday, Ben Ebbrell, their resident chef, said that they’ve gotten a lot of requests to make a halo-halo through the years but never made one because they knew nothing about it.
To research (read: a taste-testing), they visited a boba shop in London that serves a version of halo-halo topped with grass jelly, banana, and crème caramel.
“I thought coming here was gonna fill me with confidence to make it, but I’m slightly more nervous now because having tasted a good and tasty one, we’ve got to recreate it,” Ebbrell said.
But their version turned out to be more authentic than the one they tried.
Theirs was topped with the usual suspects: red and green jelly, sweetened kidney beans, garbanzo beans (chickpeas), and crème caramel. They even made their own ube ice cream from cream and ube jam they got from China Town.
Jamie Spafford, also a member of the Sorted Food channel and regular taste tester, had mixed feelings about the “mix-mix.”
“Chickpeas, that’s just hummus,” he joked in the beginning but eventually said “I know 3/4 of that is delicious,” after trying the dessert. (He still didn’t understand what the chickpeas were doing there)
In the end, they asked their viewers how well they did in creating the beloved dessert.
“We need you guys to let us know how we’ve got on, like I think they’re both spectacular but what would you have changed, what would you have put in it,” Spafford said.
Hot tip for the Sorted guys: put more than just “a drizzle” of evaporated milk and make your own leche flan (Filipino creme caramel).
How do you think they did?
Reader Interactions