EDITOR’S NOTE: During Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, KOIN 6 News is highlighting some of the people and stories in our community.
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Ever since she was a little girl, Geleen Abenoja remembers learning to cook Filipino food from her mom, aunts and grandma at family get-togethers.
“A lot of our traditional recipes. I learned from them and they’ve been passed down,” she told KOIN 6 News.
She didn’t pursue a culinary career at first. She moved from the Seattle area to Portland in 2012 for nursing school. But the call to create some of her family’s comfort food would never really go away.
“I worked in health care for a long time and was getting really burnt out. So I turned back to baking, is kind of my creative outlet. I really wanted to learn more about my cultural background, our recipes and, like, food history in the Philippines.”
That journey led to baking things for a now-closed restaurant. But since then she’s been selling her treats at pop-up events.
A permanent spot for her own place — Shop Halo Halo — is almost ready in Southeast Portland’s Woodstock neighborhood. When it opens it will showcase Geleen Abenoja’s Filipino desserts.
Even the name of her business is meaningful.
“Halo Halo in and of itself is a dessert. It’s a shaved ice dessert, usually with tropical fruit. There’s sweet beans mixed in, usually topped with ice cream, ube, jackfruit. And different regions of the Philippines make it in different ways,” she said. “But that’s how I grew up eating it. And halo halo in Tagalog means ‘mix mix.'”
While she’s not yet serving halo halo, she will soon. But one dessert already on the menu is sans rival, a sweet treat with a special story.
“My mom was a traveling nurse for a long time. This was the first one she learned to make in Saudi Arabia. She was a nurse there, and when she was craving desserts, this is what she would make. And that’s I learned how to make it from her. So, yeah, it’s kind of that bond we share over.”
Sans rival cake, she explained, is “a cashew meringue cake with vanilla buttercream and roasted cashews. It’s a cake that’s really popular in the Philippines around the holidays, and that’s usually when I had it growing up and it’s me and my mom’s favorite cake, so I have it available all year round.”
She’s even adjusted at least one recipe, ube cake, to make a vegan version. She took her mother’s method of making the purple yam jam to “make it vegan and I make my own coconut condensed milk. And then on top of it is a swirl of ube Swiss meringue buttercream.”
Shop Halo Halo shares a space with Daphne’s Botanicals at 4981 SE Woodstock Boulevard . The two women met at a pop-up event and became friends. Geleen is aiming to be officially open by summer and is close to raising enough money to reach her goal for the bakery.