Epals: Our own version of Manila Pen's "Pen Pals"

Everyone has probably tried -- or at least heard of -- Pen Pals, a signature dessert offering from the Manila Peninsula Hotel. It's a humongous serving of 19 scoops of ice cream, a bed of fruit, marshmallows, sorbet, wafer sticks, whipped cream, and maraschino cherries, all in a huge bowl. Craving for it now? Well our team here at the office thought of making our own version, which we called Epals. Epalis actually a slang for someone who intentionally seeks attention, butting in conversations, volunteering on nearly everything, sometimes acting like a know-it-all -- you get the picture. But it's totally unrelated to our ice cream concoction.

We bought one pint each of chocolate, cheese, strawberry, and cookies n' cream ice cream, then a litter of ube and half a gallon of vanilla. The last two weren't available in pints at the store. For fruit, we just settled with banana since there were no melons available. We also got a bag of marshmallows, a canister of wafer sticks, and a pack of Loacker Quadratinis. Of course we didn't put everything in.

Enjoy the photos then have some ice cream afterwards.

Epals in progress. Looks yummy already!

Everyone was just looking on with anticipation while I was busy scooping the ice cream.

Sliced bananas and marshmallow were randomly placed all around, then the wafer sticks.

Just one more scoop of ice cream. We didn't have sorbet but who cares?

Almost done.

Now it's time for the Quadratinis on top.

It was just so much fun, this Epals thing for us. At least we had something that took our minds away from work even for a few minutes.