Coconut Ice
What do you do when you have bought the wrong sort of coconut for a birthday cake? You make that old school favourite coconut ice of course. Normally it is just a mixture of desiccated coconut, condensed milk, icing sugar and a bit of food colouring, and yes it is good but we can do better than just good cant we? I was looking through some cookbooks when I spotted this recipe in, the so far underused, “Nutmeg and Custard” by Marcus Wareing. Along with the usual suspects Wareing’s recipe also includes white chocolate and raspberry jam, now doesn’t that sound even better the original? Yes its sweet, yes its not exactly healthy but sometimes you just need a little treat but beware these are quite addictive, you may want others around to prevent you eating the lot. Making this recipe wasn’t without incident though. My mixture seemed stuck at a certain temperature and no matter how long I continued to cook it just wouldn’t get to the soft ball stage. When I eventually gave up and poured out the mixture I found a nice layer of burnt sugar which I guess should teach me that cheap cookware really isn’t great for candy making.
White Chocolate and Raspberry Coconut Ice
“Nutmeg and Custard” – Marcus Wareing
600g icing sugar
1 x 397g tin condensed milk
100ml milk
25g unsalted butter
pinch of salt
200g desiccated coconut
100g white chocolate, melted
4 tblsp raspberry jam
1. Place the icing sugar, condensed milk, milk, butter and salt into a medium saucepan. Heat gently stirring until the sugar dissolves. Bring to a gentle boil and continue to cook until the mixture reaches 235F-240F (soft boil stage) on a candy thermometer.
2. Take off the heat and stir in the coconut. Divide the mixture into 2 bowls and let cool slightly. Mix the white chocolate into one portion and beat together until thickened. Pour the mixture into a greased 30cm x 15cm (I used an 8-inch sq pan) tin and level out with spatula. Chill in the fridge until slightly firmed.
3. Beat the jam into the second portion of coconut and pour this onto the chilled white chocolate layer. Level with a spatula and refrigerate a further 30-40 minutes, then cut into squares.
