Foods of Taiwan! - Dessert Edition -

I decided to start this series with desserts and sweets, since they're actually my least favorite category. But...they're also usually the prettiest foods. So I guess I'll try to go from most to least attractive...

This one's from THE ice creamery in Taichung, and their reputation is well-deserved. Most of the ground floor (I think there were three stories total) is occupied by a long, snaking line of customers that shuffle towards the display freezers containing a ridiculous number of ice cream flavors. (To give you an idea, they had about 20 varieties of chocolate.)

After all that build-up, I thought it could pretty much be summed up as a nicer-looking version of Coldstone, with more/better flavors. But it was probably wasted on me since I don't really have a sweet-tooth.

Personally, I liked this traditional frozen dessert more:

These are pretty much sold everywhere on the street. It's made of a thin, doughy skin (think crepes), with frozen peanut shavings (they basically grate a huge block of frozen peanuts) and ice cream, then rolled up like a burrito. Sweet and savory...mmm...

Ok, so these two probably should've gone first if I were trying to go from prettiest to ugliest...

I doubt they taste all that great, but they do look good (except does anyone else think it's weird that the bunny's ears are pink, and white on the inside??). Yup, the bakeries over here are pretty obsessed with decorative cakes. In terms of impressiveness, on a scale of 1-10, these are probably only fives--I just didn't get pictures of any cooler ones. My bad.

The candies below are also very traditional and sold everywhere by cart. The carts tend to draw a crowd, watching the candy maker (candy cook? candy chef? candy artist?) create the the candy characters from scratch.

If you're ever tempted to bring some home, be aware that they do crack and shatter pretty easily, so maybe just enjoy it there :)

I thought these guys were cool, but there's really not much to say.

They basically taste like nothing. Moving on...

Okay, so eating McDonald's in a foreign country might seem trashy, but I highly recommend it. A lot of the time, the menu will be modified to appeal to local tastes. (OMG they had a burger with a beef patty and a salmon patty inside! mmm also! they had a fried pork cutlet hamburger with cheese sauce drool...) For example, this isn't an apple pie:

It's a taro pie. And also they probably still fry their pies, because it was extremely hot inside.

Alright, that's it for the sweet stuff. Unless I hear otherwise, I'm probably gonna go with seafood for the next installment.

Bon appétit!