Espumillas

Last weekend, we went out to Jackson Heights for the Viva La Comida festival. There were performers, bands, and lots of street food, and we loved it. One of the foods that we had for the very first time was a popular Ecuadorian street food dessert called espumillas. We had never even heard of them before that day, but they were one of the few dessert items at the festival and we had been wanting to try something Ecuadorian ever since we didn't get around to checking that out during our World Cup challenge.

The cart at the festival was a small cart that usually sets up somewhere in Corona. They had a big bin of what looked like a cross between ice cream and foam in both white and pink colors. All of it was covered in sprinkles, which always attracts me to a dessert. Some people were getting cones, but we opted for one of the small takeout containers instead, and since we were getting kind of full, we decided to just take it home to eat as a snack later that afternoon. They were nice and gave us cones to take home too.

Espumillas are basically a fruit-flavored meringue, a mix of egg whites, sugar, and fruit, usually guava. We weren't sure what flavor these were, but we did get a hint of guava or maybe some berry flavor. We didn't really taste any difference between the white and the pink, so that may just be food coloring. A ate his espumillas both in the cones and straight from the box, while I am not a big cone person and just ate it straight. The texture was a bit like a foam, but denser. A bit like whipped cream, but lighter and airier. Not heavy and didn't feel oily or greasy like whipped cream can. It felt a little bit weird at first, but it quickly grew on us. We also liked that it was sweet, but not overly sweet. It was nice and light.

We had no idea if the espumillas we got from the cart were authentic or typical, and I was so interested to learn more about them, that I spent some time while we were eating on Google looking up espumillas. I found lots of pictures of espumillas from Ecuador and they looked pretty much exactly like ours in both consistency and color. (They're different from the Nicaraguan and Salvadoran versions which look more like what I picture when I think of meringue.) We were really happy that we were able to try such a unique treat and something truly Ecuadorian. We don't know when the cart is out in Corona, and it seems to be the only place in the city that makes this, but we would definitely love to get more some time!