Cook and Brew.

Seeing these luscious and refreshing Halo-halo and ice cream desserts at this humid moment makes me want to forget all about those diet pills that work I’ve just read and run to Manila Hotel now.

Halo-halo is a mixture of various boiled sweet beans and fruits added with shaved ice, leche flan and milk served cold in a tall glass or bowl. Common ingredients are garbanzos, sugar palm fruit (kaong), kidney beans, macapuno, nata de coco, ube, kamote, jackfruit (langka), tapioca or sago, sweetened corn kernels, pinipig, leche flan, ice cream and gelatin.

Other variants of simpler Halo-halo are saba con yelo using bananas as the primary ingredient and mais con yelo using sweetened corn kernels.

These cooling snack delights are perfect to beat the scorching summer heat.

A party trend that has become quite popular lately is the Chocolate Fountain. From birthdays to baby showers to baptismal to corporate events to weddings, the chocolate fountain table might have been the next crowded area next to the buffet table.

A chocolate fountain is a stainless steel with 2 or 3 (or more) tiers that melts chocolate and produces a continuous flow of chocolate film over the tiers like a fountain. The chocolate fondue are usually: Bittersweet Chocolate, Darksweet Chocolate, Premium Chocolate, Milk Chocolate, White Chocolate, and even Colored Chocolate. There is a variety of “dippers” or “dippings” which are used to dip into the chocolate film and cover it with the desired amount of chocolate.

Dippers can be fruits and non-fruits:
Fruits:
1.Banana
2.Apple
3.Pineapple
4.Orange
5.Melon
6.Watermelon
7. Grapes
8. Strawberry
9. Blueberry (Frozen)
10. Kiwi
11. Raspberries (Frozen)

and Non-Fruits:
1.Chocostick Wafer
2.Vanilla Wafer
3.Breadstick
4.Marshmallows
5.Graham Cracker
6.Garlic Fingers
7.French Bread
8. Pretzels
9. Mini Donuts
10. Chocolate Chip Cookies
11. Peanut Butter Chip Cookies
12. Butter Cookies
13. Mini cup cakes (in choco, ube, strawberry, and cheese)
14. Churros
15. Rosquillos
16. Broas
17. Barquillos
18. Butter Egg Roll Cookies
19. Nachos
20. French Fries

The Chocolate Fountain is highly favored because of the following advantages:
1. It simplifies your menu. Just serve the chocolate and dippers then the dessert bar is done.
2. Because of the interactive and fascinating experience of “dipping” it makes eating more exciting.
3. It is an elegant and impressive table centerpiece.

Tokyo Cafe's Chocolate Banana Parfait

For our Father’s Day lunch dessert at Tokyo Cafe, we had this very sinfully delicious Chocolate Banana Parfait. I can’t actually find the perfect word to describe how my taste buds went gaga over this. All I know is that I suddenly felt heaven when the sweet blend of the chocolate, cream and banana touched the tip of my tongue. I researched on the web the recipe for this one and this is the simplest I got from dole.com. I am yet to try this recipe so I can’t guarantee yet if this recipe is as heaven as Tokyo Cafe’s.

Ingredients:
1/4 cup boiling water
2/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips
2 DOLE® Bananas (1 extra-ripe, 1 firm)
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1-1/4 cups frozen whipped topping, thawed
1/2 cup DOLE Fresh or Fresh Frozen Raspberries

Directions:
* Pour boiling water over chocolate chips in small bowl; stir until smooth.
* Combine extra-ripe banana, brown sugar, vanilla and melted chocolate, in blender or food processor container. Cover: blend until smooth. Fold in whipped topping.
* Spoon half of mousse into 4 parfait or dessert glasses. Slice remaining firm banana over mousse in glasses. Spoon remaining mousse over bananas. Chill at least 30 minutes. Top with raspberries.
* Garnish with additional sliced banana if desired.

***Photographed by my beloved husband.

Mallow Mud

A creamy mixture of mallows and chocolate cookies

For my first ever recipe share, here’s one of those maiden oh-so-easy-to-do desserts I made. Except for the butter that needs to be melted, there’s no cooking involved. I got this recipe from Nestle’s Best Recipes Book which I bought when a cooking demo was conducted at Nestle years ago.

Ingredients:
1 1/3 cups cream filled chocolate cookies, coarsely chopped
2 250 ml. bricks NESTLÉ All Purpose Cream
3/4 cup butter, melted
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups mini marshmallows

Preparation:
1. Combine all of the ingredients in a bowl.
2. Pour into an 8×8x2 – inch container.
3. Top with extra mallows or chunks of chocolate cream cookies.
4. Chill for at least an hour before serving.

What I like about their cookbook is that it includes Cooking notes such as:

Nutritional info per serving:
Carbohydrates 11 g.
Fats 29 g.
Protein 1 g.
Calories 309 Kcal.

Preparation Time: 20 minutes
Servings: 8

**It’ll be your instant ice cream when chilled for more than an hour.