Queso helado — Binge-worthy ice cream!
Ever try a new food and think, “Oh, man! I gotta eat this every day!”? That was exactly how I felt after my first spoonful of queso helado. Prior to visiting the South American country Peru, I had never heard of this iced sweet. As soon as I arrived in the UNESCO World Heritage Site and the country’s second largest city, Arequipa, I saw it everywhere. Along with its reputation for art, literature, baroque architecture crafted from volcanic ash and the volcanoes that produced this ash, Arequipa is known as the birthplace of queso helado. In Spanish queso helado means “frozen cheese” but this creamy, cinnamon-spiced ice cream seems more like frozen heaven to me. Its deceptive name comes from its appearance. When scraped rather than scooped from a metal bowl, the slabs of ice cream resemble wedges of cheese. Don’t let looks fool you. It tastes nothing like cheese. What’s in queso helado? Unlike traditional ice cream, queso helado contains no cream. Instead it features three types of milk, sweetened condensed, evaporated and whole …