Monday 26 January 2015

Australia Day: Violet crumble ice cream, icons, haggis and the beach.

I was just back from holidays, with a huge blog backlog and promised myself not to make new recipes.  But Australia Day was coming up and I have a Pinterest board of ideas. I decided to try a Violet Crumble ice cream and remember a forgotten icon.  It took me a few tries but it was amazing when it worked.  And I am happy to share it with you on this Australia Day.

Australia Day is a potent mixture of patriotism, nostalgia and icons.  It is a day for reflecting on who we are, how we got here and where we are headed.  If we dare to be honest it is not easy to navel-gaze and remember how our nation of Australia was founded in the land of the many nations of Aboriginal Australia.  I have written about remembering the nation's Aboriginal origins before.

Today I am writing something less important but personally significant nevertheless.  The Violet Crumble, an Australian chocolate covered honeycomb bar, was created in 1913 by Hoadley's Chocolates in Melbourne.  As a child my sister and I alternated giving my dad bags of Violet Crumbles and Polly Waffles each Christmas.

In 2009, the Polly Waffle was discontinued by Nestle who have now taken over Hoadley's Chocolates.  I sometimes worry the Violet Crumble will go the same way.  They no longer sell bags of small pieces, only bars.  Yet it seems that the similar Crunchie, which was created in England by Fry's in 1929, is more popular.  We rarely had Crunchie when I was growing up and I still find the melting honeycomb filling looks unnaturally yellow, tastes a little burnt and melts in the mouth rather fast compared to the harder mellower Violet Crumble that really does shatter in the most pleasing way.

We don't eat a lot of chocolate bars so in some ways it doesn't affect us much.  Yet in other ways, it makes me sad that globalisation means that foreign chocolate bars are elbowing our home made icons out of the way.  The same might be said for my favourite Chokito bar (which I assume is Australian but can't confirm).  And Darrell Lea chocolates are just hanging in there.  Last week it was announced that another Australian chocolate manufacturer, Ernest Hillier, had gone into voluntary administration.

As this is an indulgent post on Australia Day, I will share a couple of photos from yesterday.  We visited family and then bought fish and chips to eat at Torquay beach on a cooler day (22 C).  This above photo is especially for Shaheen who asked what a corn jack was.  It is the roll with the crispy skin and creamy corn filling.

By the time we got to the beach it was raining and we huddled under a tree in our cardigans.  Then we walked along the beach, bought ice creams from a van, splashed about in the waves and got sunburnt.  I had honey crunch ice cream, Sylvia had strawberry and E had plain.  Later he told us the fish was bland and so was the ice cream.  He had thought 'plain' meant Madagascan vanilla rather than what it said on the label!

Sylvia is so keen on ice cream that we have eaten it quite a bit this summer.  Here are a few ice cream moments:
  • At a park where the ice cream van kept come around with its music on.  We can resist the music when we hear it at home but it is harder in the park.  A little kid dropped her ice cream in front of us and was given another.
  • At a local shop where I have often promised to take Sylvia.  There were chewy bits in the ice cream which I wasn't keen on.
  • At Barwon Heads on our recent holiday.  Sylvia and her cousin got rainbow ice creams while I dreamed of buying the nearby raw vegan pad thai

Cool weather and rain at the beach made me feel like we were in Scotland in summer.  Which was quite fitting given that last night was Burns Night.  We like to have vegetarian haggis to remember Robert Burns birthday.  Luckily I had some in the freezer leftover from New Year's Eve.

I had been determined to follow a recipe in my new McSween Haggis Bible.  Let's just say that I started with a recipe but my resulting haggis stuffed courgettes baked with a tomato sauce was unrecognisable.  I started just baking the stuffed courgettes but they took so long I covered them with tomato sauce to soften them with some steam.  They were delicious eaten watching the Australian Open (tennis).  The remaining stuffed courgettes will go on pizza tonight.

Back back to the violet crumble ice cream.  It was a simple matter of beating together cream and condensed milk and folding in chopped violet crumble.  It was inspired by Malta Today but I later found it was almost a family recipe when my sister in law told me she made it that way.  (It came from my brother's, wife's, sister's, husband's grandmother!)

Yet I am never very confident about whipping cream.  I messed up the ice cream the first time by overbeating the cream.  The texture wasn't quite right and it needed to soften up so I could scoop it out.  (Can you see the texture is wrong in the above photo!)

I had to try again.  This time I was careful to beat the cream and condensed milk on low speed.  It worked perfectly this time.  Creamy with great depth of nostalgic flavour, albeit very rich.  We all loved it.  Great for dinner in the backyard after a hot day.  Sylvia preferred it stirred until melty and creamy.  E declared it the best ice cream ever and that he would like to have it for breakfast lunch and dinner.  If only we could....

It has been a very relaxed Australia Day here after some very busy days.  We have had time for pancakes, games, nail polish, cups of tea, face paint, television, making a doll's jungle gym out of a stool, and reading the weekend newspaper.  My favourite line was in an article in The Age by John Huxley (A Brummie from Balmoral) who writes that the past is "slippery, shifty, elusive, subject to change. Like old loves, homes, cars, jobs, favourite things, so much of what we miss no longer exists. If it ever did."  I hope you are enjoying your day too.

More Violet Crumble Recipes:

Chocolate honeycomb slice - ninesm
Honeycomb, chocolate and almond pavlova: What Katie ate
Pumpkin ice cream with home made violet crumble - taste.com.au
Violet crumble brownies - Thoroughly nourished life
Violet crumble cheesecake - Best recipes
Violet crumble cookies - Belly rumbles
Violet crumble lamingtons - Here's something I prepared earlier
White choc honeycomb mud cake - taste.com.au

I am sending this ice cream to Choclette of Chocolate Log Blog for We Should Cocoa and Kavey of Kavey Eats for Bloggers Scream for Ice Cream.  Choclette and Kavey have combined their blog challenge and asked for ice cream with chocolate this month.  (The closing date for submissions was yesterday but Kavey has said it is fine to be a day late.)

If you would like more Australian recipes, I did a round up of Aussie recipes from my blog and elsewhere last year.

Violet Crumble Ice Cream
Serves 6 to 8

300ml double cream*
1/2 cup condensed milk
100g violet crumble*

Use hand held beaters to beat cream and condensed milk until thick enough to hold its shape (I think this might be called soft peak stage - I just beat it with beaters on low until it reached the ribbon stage and then beat another few seconds - this seemed to help make sure it didn't turn into butter).  Roughly chop violet crumble and stir in.  Tip mixture into a tub and freeze overnight or until solid.  It is creamy enough that it doesn't need to sit out of the freezer to soften before serving.

*NOTES: It is a very rich ice cream so we preferred a 35% butterfat to a 51% butterfat cream.  Violet crumble is a chocolate covered honeycomb.  You could substitute other chocolate covered honeycomb or even make your own.

On the Stereo:
Born Sandy Devotional: the Triffids

21 comments:

  1. I actually thought the violet crumble ice cream was made from violet the flower, interested to learn of the violet crumble which you describe as Crunchier which I rather like, but agree it does melt in the mouth rather too quickly. thank you so much for sharing an image of your corn jack, very interesting. I think it's something D would like. I made my own veggie haggis at the weekend to celebrate Burns Night, but it also coincided with St day wens Day -Welsh Valenines day, so I celebrated both Celtic tradiitions together.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Shaheen - violet crumbles are named after the wife of Mr Hoadley I think! This time of year seems so busy with commemorative days - it is also India Day today. I often either do Burns Night or Australia Day for making special food! It worked ok this year with haggis in the freezer and making an Aussie dessert.

      Delete
  2. Oh lovely. There's something wonderful about nostalgia isn't there, the way a taste from childhood has all our memories tumbling out.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Kavey - oh yes - nostalgia is a great starting place for cooking!

      Delete
  3. Ah yes, I used to eat Chokitos! But my favourite growing up was always Tosca, and my ice cream was always a Golden Gaytime. In more recent pre-vegan years I liked the Crunchie icecream bar, but never liked the bar itself! I made your haggis recipe (with a few things left out as I didn't have them) and it was great!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Veganopoulous - Golden Gaytime was my favourite ice cream - I saw someone do a gaytime cake which looked like fun. Glad you enjoyed the haggis - I am pretty slapdash with the recipe and have made substitutions when I don't have everything. It is a pretty flexible recipe.

      Delete
  4. Violet crumble ice cream, wow- it's really caught my attention x

    ReplyDelete
  5. Your day sounds lovely. You made me curious -- Violet Crumble bars are for sale around a mile from my house at a store called World Market, which has various exotic candy! They cost twice as much as Lindt bars, though, so I didn't try one.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Mae - try them - they are really good (though doesn't everything taste better with a drop of nostalgia)

      Delete
  6. I've always preferred Violet Crumble to Crunchy. I think it's because the honeycomb is harder in a Violet Crumble whereas it's much softer in a Crunchy. I hate that you can no longer buy Violet Crumble in the share packs - I used to buy those for a movie night. It's funny you showed an image of hot chips with potato scallops - in my teenage years I used to go down to the beach with friends and we'd buy hot chips and potato scallops followed by a Violet Crumble xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks charlie - love your violet crumble memories - I used to love it when my dad brought our his share bag of violet crumbles!

      Delete
  7. I've never had a corn jack. At first I thought it was a chiko roll! I do love potato scallops in all of their greasy glory. It reminds me of being a teenager :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Lorraine - I have grown very fond of corn jacks - they are just more stodge but at least I feel I am eating a bit more than potato when I get fish and chips!

      Delete
  8. I'm so impressed you made the ice cream from scratch! I went through a phase in my younger years of crushing chocolate bars and lollies into ice cream and did love the Violet Crumble equivalent (although I think I was a Crunchie girl, which Mr Bite thinks is awful - he much prefers Violet Crumbles). Your from scratch version sounds excellent and just the thing for Australia Day.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Kari - I can see why you would crush chocolate bars into ice cream - could imagine sylvia would do this ad nauseum if given the chance - I never loved ice cream enough to bother! I do love condensed milk which probably makes this ice cream a bit more attractive to me

      Delete
  9. Ice cream looks gorgeous! I used to love violet crumbles. I recently made a vegan version which turned out pretty well too :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Kate - I have tried a home made chocolate covered honeycomb and loved it - must do it with my sylvia she would love it. And the recipe that inspired me used home made violet crumble so you could try that in a vegan ice cream!

      Delete
  10. I know what you mean about bright orange Crunchie. It would be interesting to compare with Violet Crumble! The ice cream looks good. I have made loads of no churn cream-condensed milk ice creams recently. It's such a fab, quick, go to recipe. Interestingly though, I whip the cream and fold in the condensed milk. I wonder if it makes much difference?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Kate - I did look at your method but the method of whipping the cream and condensed milk together seemed the best way to keep all the air in (was worried mixing the condensed milk into the cream might knock a bit of the air out) but you might have noticed that I am a bit paranoid about whipping cream - it is not my favourite thing to do - perhaps it is because I only used to use hand held beaters when I helped my mum and the electric beaters work so fast!

      Delete
  11. Haha, I thought this was some sort of violet flavoured crumble pudding when I first saw this. Interesting to hear about your different but similar chocolate bars. Most of our British chocolate companies have been bought out by big global giants - all very sad. Your ice-cream looks delicious - I do like a bit of honeycomb, but find crunches too sweet.

    When it comes to making condensed milk ice-cream, I tend to whip half of it in with the cream and fold in the other half, but that's because I usually have melted chocolate in the other half!

    Thanks for joining in with #WeShouldBSFIC this month.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Hi Johanna, oh my gosh, thank you for mentioning my cookies. And wow, your ice cream looks amazing and I can only imagine how great it tastes.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for dropping by. I love hearing from you. Please share your thoughts and questions. Annoyingly the spammers are bombarding me so I have turned on the pesky captcha code (refresh to find an easy one if you don't like the first one)