Ever had coconut ice? How about watermelon ice? A while back I was invited to join in a sweet swap with other Australian food bloggers by Sara over at BellyRumbles.com. Never one to shy away from anything sweet, I said I was in!
Then my sister came to visit from New York and I had a blogging workshop to do a presentation for and then my 92-year old father-in-law arrived. Talk about burning the candle at both ends. I knew I’d be a bit late on my delivery but I hadn’t seen anyone in my family for years and I was determined that I wasn’t going to miss one single moment.
To make up for my 3 day lateness I made two sweets to send. First I made Russian Caramels that I blogged about last time. They take a while to make but really simple and delicious.
Next I made watermelon ice. I’d never made a coconut ice before but I saw one in a candy shop recently and the lady in the shop told me she was working on a watermelon slice with green on the bottom and pinky red on the top. Well, that was just the challenge I needed.
Thankfully I’d just bought some watermelon flavouring and I had some chocolate chips (because every watermelon should have at least a few seeds, right?) and I had plenty of dessicated coconut in the pantry. The only other ingredients were a can of sweetened condensed milk and icing (confectioners) sugar. This is really easy to put together.
I know my sweets were retro and others would (and did) make fancier trendy sweets but sometimes nana recipes are really good.
- 1 395gram can sweetened condensed milk
- 4 cups dessicated coconut
- 3½ cups icing sugar
- handful of dark chocolate chips
- Watermelon flavouring
- green and red food colouring
- Add sweetened condensed milk, icing sugar, flavouring and dessicated coconut to a large bowl.
- Mix well and divide mixture in half.
- Color each half with either green or red (it will be pink)
- Press the green mixture into the bottom of an 8x8 pan or similar with your fingertips
- Press the red/pink mixture on top of the green and poke in chocolate chips for seeds.
- Smooth surface with wet fingers
- Place in the refrigerator for 4 hours and then cut into squares or rectangles.
And what did I receive? Good stuff!
From Sara at BellyRumbles I received her deep roasted almond chocolate bark in both white and milk chocolate. It didn’t last long and I had to slap fingers out of the box so I could plate and photograph it. It was that good.
Next I received some chocolate drizzled honeycomb from Cath at Confessions of a Glutton. It was a lovely package of sweet goodness sent in a reusable storage container. Win on two levels!
Finally I received three packages from Shez at One Bite More. The spicy kick in the Black Gold Bars was new in sweets for me but very intriguing I must say. The pepper in the caramels also woke me up!
To the admins in the Sweet Swap, Sara from Bellyrumbles.com and Amanda from Chewtown.com, thanks for organising this event. As well as swapping some mighty good sweets, the Sweet Swap raised money for the charity Child Fund Australia. Thanks also to the other bloggers who spent time making their creations for us to share.