Snow Fluff in Taiwan

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Snow Fluff in Taiwan

The Taiwanese introduced a popular iteration of the shaved ice, an ice dessert that had been around for many years. The traditional shave ice is made by shaving a block of ice and improved by adding different kinds of toppings. The toppings can be any of the fruits in season or some dessert items like custard, beans, or even ice cream.

The Taiwanese put a new twist to the shaved ice by reversing the process and creating a flavor-infused ice block. Flavors are added to the water before it is frozen to make an ice block. The flavor-infused block is shaved to produce soft and thin ribbons of flavored ice to be topped with fruits, nuts, and other assorted sweets. To make the concoction more flavorful, condensed milk is sprinkled on top of all the ingredients. The resulting product is a cross between the traditional shaved ice and ice cream. Called or xue hua bing in Chinese, the snow fluff has popped up in the different Taiwanese stores and shops that sell iced desserts and other cold delicacies.

Snow fluff, sometimes referred to as fluff ice in other countries, is as creamy as the ice cream minus the fat content. It is closer to frozen yogurt but does not contain as much calories. It is comparable to the Hawaiian shaved ice that melts in the mouth. People who tried snow fluff simply love it but they could not make a common description of the delicacy. One really has to try it before fully understanding what it really is.

The snow fluff is believed to be invented at one of the stalls at the Shilin Night Market in Taiwan but there are no credible accounts of who actually created the first snow fluff.

Making Snow Fluff

While shaved ice is prepared by grinding or shaving ice and adding toppings and condensed milk or fruit syrups, snow fluff starts closer to the ice cream. Different flavorings, such as chocolate or green tea are mixed into a combination of milk and water. The mixture is then frozen into giant candle-like cylinder block.

The frozen block is then mounted onto the ice shaving machine which makes very thin and silky slices or sheets that form a beautiful layer. The thin ribbon-like slices are so thin that they immediately melt in the mouth, like cotton candy.

The prepared dessert comes as a pile of colorful snow drizzled with fruit syrup and finished with different toppings that may include red beans, grass jelly or lychee, a favorite fruit in Taiwan. Other tropical fruits, such as mango, watermelon, strawberry, passion fruit, and cantaloupe are the people’s favorites.

From Taiwan to the Rest of the World

Snow fluff became a crowd-drawer not only in every city of Taiwan but also to major cities around the world. One will find shops and restaurants selling snow fluff in the Asian hubs of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, and other major cities of the U.S., Canada, and Europe.

 

Snow Fluff History

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Snow Fluff History

Snow Fluff, also known as “shaved snow”, is a milk-based take on the traditional shaved ice dessert done in a non-traditional way. Through a process that takes up to eight hours to complete, a block of Fluff Ice is created by infusing flavors into large cylindrical blocks. When the blocks of Fluff Ice are shaved, the result is a magical union of delicate texture and decadent taste – Snow Fluff. It offers a taste-texture profile that is similar to frozen cotton candy. Snow Fluff is light and airy but it is amazingly flavorful with every bite.

Snow Fluff is served with toppings such as fresh fruits, beans, and jellies for variety. The flavors are embedded in the creamy ice block used to make snow fluff. It is different from the traditional shaved ice that is made from water-based ice block with no flavor. Flavor of the shaved ice is provided by the toppings and a drizzle of condensed milk or brown sugar on top.

The Beginning

Different cultures have their own version of an ice-based dessert made of fine shavings of ice and sweet condiments or syrups. The first documented ice-based dessert was attributed to the Roman Emperor Nero who sent slaves in 27 B.C.E. to collect snow from nearby mountains that he flavored with a mixture of honey and fruit. The wealthy people of Imperial Japan sent people to retrieve snow from the mountains which they flavored before consuming. This tradition was brought by Japanese who migrated to Hawaii, a warm island with close enough snow-capped mountains from which snow can be brought down to the warm areas without melting.

Different Versions

Ice-based desserts are popular in different cultures all over the world. They are called snow-cones or snowballs, crushed or shaved ice topped with sweet fruit flavored syrup, in the United States and Canada. The Cubans call their version “granizados” from the Spanish word granizo or hailstones. Frio frio is how it is called in the Dominican Republic. It is “raspado”, from the Spanish raspar or shaved, in Mexico.

Ice-based desserts are also well-known in the Asian countries. It is known as “ais kacang” in Singapore and Malaysia, “Halo halo” in the Philippines, “es campur” in Indonesia, and “Nam Kang Sai” in Thailand. The Japanese call their version “Kakigori” while the Koreans call it “Patbingsu”.

The Taiwanese Version

Ice-based desserts are popular in Taiwan. It is believed that the Taiwanese invented both shaved ice and the Snow Fluff. The Taiwanese shaved ice is composed of a generous amount of shaved ice, most often flavored, and topped with various fruits, dessert beans, cereal, marshmallows, candy, ice cream, and whatever they can think of. It is then drenched with condensed milk for the ultimate flavor.

This Taiwanese ice-based dessert has been called by many names: snow cream, fluff ice, snow fluff, milk fluff, or milk snow. For Taiwanese, however, this beautiful ice concoction is simply called “xue hua bing” which literally means “snow flower”. Xue hua bing was believed to be exported out of Taiwan for the first time in the 1990s. The original version is made by freezing milk with a variety of different flavors in cylinders. A special machine is used to shave the ice into paper-thin ribbons or shreds. The texture of the snow depends on the ingredients used, the amount of cream or milk, and how frozen is the block.

Since Snow Fluff was exported out of Taiwan in the 1990s, it is now one of the most famous ice-based desserts in the world.