Jump to navigation Jump to search For the Hawaiian shave ice dessert, see shave ice. Shaved ice is guanabana ice cream large family of ice-based desserts made of fine shavings of ice or finely crushed ice and sweet condiments or syrups. The dessert is consumed worldwide in various forms and ways. Many shaved ices are confused with “Italian ice”, called “granita”.
The first documented “shaved ice” dessert was made in 27 B. The Roman Emperor Nero sent slaves to collect snow from nearby mountains that he then flavored with a fruit and honey mixture. In imperial Japan, the dessert was also a treat reserved for royalty, as it was made of natural ice formed during the coldest period of winter, which was stored in icehouses. Shave ice varieties can be found around the globe with Asia being a particularly popular region. A machine used for shaving ice for shaved ice desserts. Artistic representation of a Piragua cart. In Canada and most of the contiguous United States, shaved ice, commonly known as “Snow cones” or “Snowballs”, consist of crushed or shaved ice topped with sweet fruit flavored syrup.
In Cuba, as well as in many Cuban neighborhoods in the United States, shaved ice is known as “granizados,” after the Spanish word granizo for hailstones. In Miami, granizados are often sold in conjunction with other frozen confections in ice cream trucks and stands throughout the city. In the Dominican Republic and many Dominican neighborhoods, snow cones are called “frío frío”, with “frío” being the Spanish word for “cold”, or alternately called “Yun Yun”. In Hawaii, they are known as “Hawaiian shave ice” or just “Shave ice”, and often resemble East Asian versions of shaved ice, with condensed milk, adzuki beans or mochi balls often added as toppings, while a scoop of vanilla ice cream is common at the bottom of the cone.
In Mexico, as well as in some Spanish-speaking communities of the Southwestern United States, Texas, and California, a finely shaved and syruped ice is called a “raspa”, or “raspado”. In most of Puerto Rico and many Puerto Rican neighborhoods, they are named “Piragua”, because they are made in pyramid shapes and agua means water in Spanish. Churchill from Costa Rica made up of ice, syrup, condensed milk, powder milk, ice cream, tamarind, fruits, sponge cake filling. In Ecuador there are three versions. The ones sold at street carts and having ice which has been shaved manually with a handheld tool resembling a wood hand plane are called “raspados”.