Choco Balls – Easy Dessert from Ace Biscuit

It’s normal in Philippines for people to have a bit of a “sideline” – doing something on the side to earn extra money. And one of our colleagues was selling these teeny weeny choco balls for 5 pesos each which I find expensive so I decided to make my own choco balls for family to taste.

Ingredients:
Ace Biscuits at 42.25 pesos per 10 packs
Marshmallows at 39.60 pesos
Dessicated Coconut at 43.95 pesos per 200 grams
Condensed milk at 21.25 pesos per 168 ml can

Total cost of the ingredients was 147.05 pesos and I only used 5 packs of Ace biscuits, the whole can of milk and some of the marshmallows and coconut to make 25 pieces of choco balls. So at 5 pesos per piece, my co-worker is earning about 100 pesos per 50 balls. Not bad for a sideline I think considering that the minimum wage in Cebu City for 8 hours of work is 305 pesos.

So how to make these choco balls? Mix Ace Biscuit with milk until its soft like a dough. Then wrap this mixture around a marshmallow until it looks a bit like a ball and then cover it all over with a dessicated coconut. One of the easiest dessert I’ve ever done really. Yay!

Making Homemade Dessicated Coconut

Dessicated coconut is available in most grocery stores in the Philippines but our clan prefers making our own fresh and homemade dessicated coconut. How? Buy dried and mature coconuts from the market for around 10 pesos per piece. Some stores offer free use of their machine that will chip the meat from its shell into small cuts if you buy their coconuts but of course we have our own manual equipment that we call KUDKURAN.

matured coconut

dessicated coconut

 kudkuran

Making Homemade Dessicated Coconut

I know how to use the kudkuran of course. PROMISE! But nobody really wants to give me this job as it will take a century before I could finish one coconut.

What did we do with our homemade dessicated coconut? Use it to cook the greenest biko you could ever find topped with sesame seeds. Biko is a Filipino dessert made of sticky rice and coconut milk derived from dessicated coconut.

 biko with pandan

Ice Castle for Halo-Halo

We love halo-halo and there’s only one place in our mind that offers delicious and affordable halo-halo in the city – Ice Castle. If I’m not mistaken, ice castle have 3 branches in Cebu located in Ayala Mall, SM Mall and Raintree Mall which is our favorite branch because of its proximity to home.

We’ve been coming to this branch for years and we’ve had lots of memory already with other family members like Japanese kid cousin Kana chang crying hard for getting only a small size halo-halo while the rest got the normal big size.

Mom said that our last trip to Ice Castle was when my sister was still in Philippines but ever since she was gone, we just sort of change our routine. I wonder if unconsciously, we see the place as a family place and it doesn’t seem a family place anymore without her.

Anyway, I was happy to go back there again after more than 7 years and reminisce the good old times with now gray-haired mom.

Halo-halo which means Mix-Mix is a mixture of several delicious goodies like milk, ice shavings, leche flan, ube, coconut and a whole lot more.  Halo-Halo Super in Ice Castle comes with 2 scoop of ice cream at 82 pesos only or around 1.4 Euro.

Leche Flan

Sister showed me how to make a leche flan in Belgium so I thought to replicate it at home but first I have to buy a ramekin just because my sister did the leche flan in ramekins also.  Nyahaha.

Ramekins cost me 24.90 pesos (0.40 Euro) and I bought 5 because there’s 5 of us at home – me, little brother, father, mom and becky, our weekend helper.

Ingredients:
6 Egg Yolk
500 ml fresh milk
100 ml condensed milk

1 cup sugar for caramel

Directions:
Blend Egg yolk and the milk in a bowl. I try not to beat it well because I don’t want to invite air and make my leche flan holey.

Heat the sugar while continually stirring it until it melts. Pour small liquid sugar on the ramekins and set aside. When sugar solidifies a bit, Pour the milk mixture on top.

I tried to use my turbo broiler for my leche flan by adding some water on a pan where the ramekins are placed but after 30 minutes of cooking, I took it out and cook it by steam instead on our stove top. I don’t want to waste electricity if cooking in turbo broiler takes longer than 30 minutes.

Don’t forget to cover the ramekins with aluminum foil to avoid water condensation ruining the flan

Picture above is NOT my leche flan.

It is one of the desserts serve in Joven’s Restaurant but I had hoped that my flan would look like that. Unfortunately, whip cream doesn’t come cheap so I make do with what we have.  And since refrigerator is still abundant with Belgium chocolates (thanks to my sister), I decided to use Belgium truffles instead.

Belgian chocolates is sensitive to heat though and being in a tropical country, my leche flan looked like it’s been topped with rabbit poo instead.

P.S. Maybe I should add more egg yolk next time to make my flan more yellowish. What do you think?

Mango Float Dessert

Mom went to Carbon Market and bought mangoes at 50 pesos per kilo. After knowing that a mango cost about 50 pesos per PIECE in UK, it made me realize that I need to appreciate mangoes because NOT everyone can enjoy this sweet and juicy treat after all.

Since we have an overload of mangoes at home, I decided to make one of my favorite and easy dessert called Mango Float or Refrigerator cake.

Ingredients:
3 cans of All Purpose Cream
1 small can of condensed Milk (I don’t like it too sweet)
Crushed Graham Biscuits (holds the layering better)
Diced Mangoes

Directions:
Mix cream, condensed milk and diced mangoes.

In a pan, layer crushed graham with the milk mixture. Serve cold.

Simple eh? The nice thing about this recipe is that you can make your own variations like Chocolate Float, Coffee Crumble Float, etc. The sky is the limit. Just replace mango with your favorite ingredient.