|
The fruit salad version, wrapped in
sour cream. |
|
February 2 is National Heavenly Hash Day. But which heavenly hash?
If someone offers you Heavenly Hash, you may want to clarify:
Is it a fruit salad bound with sour cream or whipped cream, or a chocolate confection or baked good filled with marshmallows and nuts?
Heavenly Hash: The Fruit Salad
The fruit salad version of Heavenly Hash is a traditional Southern dish. It began as a Christmas recipe with red maraschino cherries, green grapes, pecans and other ingredients folded into whipped cream.
Over generations the recipe evolved, with everyone inventing his or her own hash (the term, after all, indicates a jumble or muddle of ingredients).
So today the recipe for heavenly hash essentially requires some kind of fruit—fresh, canned and/or candied—in some kind of creamy white binder.
|
|
Here are just a few of the combinations we perused:
Fruit cocktail and maraschino cherries
Cherry pie filling and crushed pineapple
Shredded coconut and/or bananas
Grapes and mandarin orange segments
Enhanced with marshmallows and nuts
Flavored with lime Jell-O or vanilla pudding
All folded into sour cream, whipped cream or Cool Whip
We make Heavenly Hash with fresh fruits (strawberries, bananas, pineapple, peaches) and nuts (a mix of pecans, pistachios and walnuts), folded into crème fraîche or slightly sweetened sour cream. If the whole concept sounds odd to you, know that Heavenly Hash is very much a comfort food to its fans.
Heavenly Hash: The Candy/Cake/Cookie/Ice Cream
Folks liked the concept of heavenly hash so much, they ported it into other sweets called Heavenly Hash:
A sweet, fudgy chocolate candy, made of marshmallows, evaporated milk and chocolate chips (which are melted to form the candy base), chopped nuts, corn syrup and sugar
A cookie version, folding miniature marshmallows, chopped nuts and coconut in a chocolate cookie dough
A chocolate cake version
An ice cream version: chocolate ice cream with a marshmallow swirl, chopped nuts and chocolate chunks (or, use the ingredients with chocolate ice cream, parfait-style)
Fudge with miniature marshmallows and nuts
So enjoy Heavenly Hash Day your style, with one of the ideas above; or freestyle it to create something new.
|
