hokey pokey!

In New Zealand - I fell in love.  I fell in love with hokey pokey ice cream.  Hokey Pokey is a candy that many people seem to know as honeycomb (although it doesn't contain any honey).  It is also what is in a Cadbury Crunchie bar for those of you who have had that.  Anyway, Hokey Pokey ice cream is vanilla ice cream with bits of broken hokey pokey candy mixed in.

While we were in Blanket Bay, I had it several nights for dessert.  By the end of our stay, they shared their recipe which I was all to happy to accept.  However, I noticed an unfamiliar ingredient - golden syrup.  Turns out we don't really have anything like it in the states.  It is like a caramel thick simple syrup, made from sugar (not corn syrup).  Anyway, on our last day - the staff at Blanket Bay presented us with a bottle of the real New Zealand stuff - it was SO sweet.

To make the candy...

The recipe calls for ingredients by weight rather than volume!
Thanks to the Teetzel's for this scale!  We use it ALL the time.  

We put sugar and golden syrup in a big pot with light corn syrup (the recipe calls for liquid glucose, but they don't sell that in the states).  Thanks to Katie for the cool spatula!

Getting started

 Once the sugar is bubbling, you add in the baking soda and it fizzes and foams and doubles in volume.  If it weren't for the boiling sugar aspect of this - I would say it would be really fun for kids.

It is like a science experiment!

Then you pour it out on a cooking sheet (thanks to Emma for the silpat liner and the Bullock's for the half sheet pan).  As you can tell - we are definitely putting our wedding gifts to good use!!   When you pick up the hardened piece of hokey pokey and tap it against the pan - it shatters like glass.  It is very cool.

We then made ice cream using the Blanket Bay recipe (although we cut it in half because our ice cream maker is smaller - thanks to Peggy for the ice cream maker)!

Ice cream in process

 We then mixed in the pieces and voila!!

It was soooo delicious!  We have since made it a couple times and have yet to be disappointed.  It sort of tastes like a caramel ice cream, but there is also something a little bit reminiscent of a golden graham or a graham cracker.  It was is very fun to make and even more fun to eat with friends!