¡Me Gusta Raspados!
The Icy Treat with Many Names
You may know raspados as shaved ice since this treat exists in pretty much
every country in the world. Some other names for raspados include raspao,
raspas, snow cones, snoballs, piraguas, or granizados, just to name a few.
In Panama, you'll find raspados (or raspao) served by street vendors as a
tasty way to cool off from the heat.
Raspados are made by
first shaving fresh ice into a cup or paper cone (as shown above), then
topping it with a sweetened condensed milk. There are a wide variety of
flavors to choose from, but common ones include mango, pineapple,
tamarind, lime, and guava.
Because this dessert is so popular all over the world, it has
likely evolved over many time periods, regions, and groups of people. One
of the first written accounts mentioning shaved ice is said to be in 27 B.C.E.
Nero, the Roman Emperor at the time, would have slaves collect snow from the
mountains to be served with fruit and honey. In the 1800s in Hawaii, Japanese
immigrants began cooling off with shaved ice after a day's work on sugar and
pineapple fields.The concept "kakigori," meaning "shaved ice," came to be because
they used their tools to shave ice off of large blocks and coated this with fruit
juice and sugar. Shaved ice became "raspado" in Panama, meaning "shaved." It is now
served all over the country in various flavors like strawberry, tiger's blood, grape, etc.
One thing is for sure — people of all ages, ethnicities, and cultures seem to love the sweet,
refreshing flavors of raspados.
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