Finally finished my sweeeet gifts for Christmas and got 10 bags of festively coloured coconut ice.
They were all going to be an icy blue to begin (and I was going to call them “Coconut Ice Cubes” or “Coconut Ice-nine”) but owing to the fact they came out quite creamy coloured, adding blue created a fetching green! So I made some pink and kept some plain to dip in Green & Black’s dark chocolate and it turned out well in the end!
My nice coconut ice recipe…
Makes 56 – 64 1 inch-ish cubes
• 2 lb granulated sugar
• 10 oz dessicated coconut
• Half a pint of milk (full fat or semi)
• Few drops of vanilla extract
• Few drops of food colour
Grease a large baking tray or square ceramic dish – it needs to have an inch or so depth.
Slowly bring the milk and the sugar to the boil in a heavy-bottomed pan – make sure there’s plenty of room for the boiling liquid to expand – it grows to 2 or 3 times the size while it’s bubbling away and you definitely don’t want this lava-like substance boiling over and sticking to everything!
Keep it boiling for about 20 or so minutes, until it reaches 236 to 238 degrees Farenheit (Soft Ball stage). If you don’t have a sugar thermometer, to test the syrup, drop a little into a bowl of cold water. If you can pick it up out of the water and it forms a squidgy ball you can roll between your finger and thumb then it’s ready. Leaving it to boil too long will make the coconut ice as hard as a glacier once it’s set, and not letting it boil long enough will mean it’ll end up like slush and never set – you’ll wind up serving it up as a thick sauce over ice-cream.
Take it off the heat and quickly (as it starts to set pretty soon!) mix in the vanilla and any colouring you want to add. The traditional thing to do at this stage is to pour half the mixture into a pan uncoloured and then colour the rest pink to pour over the top. You get a nice pink and white layered effect that way.
Pour it into your tray and place it in the fridge to cool. I find it’s easier to break up if I score a grid out on it after ten minutes of it going into the fridge.
Once it’s set you can remove it from the tray and cut it into length with a knife (careful – it can be quite hard!) and then break it into cubes along your score lines. Makes a bit of a mess and lots of crumbly bits. If it’s too crumbly, put it back in the fridge for a few hours to set completely. If it’s still not breaking up nicely it may be because the temperature wasn’t correct. You have a very nice topping for cup cakes though!
To add a bit of luxury, for one of my finished batches I melted one and a half bars of Green & Black’s chocolate in a Bain-Marie. Gently simmer some water in a pan with a glass or ceramic bowl on top of it – break up the chocolate into the bowl and it can be slowly melted this way to stop it burning – not only is that a criminal waste, it also smells awful! I then half-dipped my plain coconut ice blocks and placed them on a cool silicon sheet and popped them back in the fridge to set the chocolate.
I wrapped mine in food-grade cellophane and tied them with a bit of ribbon left over from decorating the tree.
They’ll last about 2 weeks if kept well, but they’re so nice they probably won’t get to two weeks before they’re eaten!
Happy Christmas!
