the craving...

A craving for coconut ice is gnawing away at me...the texture, the taste, the cute layers of pink and white...ah...my belly wants some very badly. I am prowling the neighbourhood keeping an eye out for school fetes or places of the sort that might have some coconut ice. I could then get some for my craving and support some local foundation of goodness at the same time, I feel this would help balance coconut ice on the famous evil-condensed-milk-containing-slice vs supporting-local-do-gooders scale and I would feel slightly better about consuming more of it :)

I had an awesome cook book when I was a child that my grandmother gave me - in fact she gave it to me twice because I lost (and then found) the first copy. It was aimed at kids and had themed sections, such as a section for "mothers day breakfast" that included pancakes and coffee cake and things that mothers would like on mother's day. It also had a section for making toffee and slices for contributing to school fetes and giving neighbours as peace offerings when you had broken their windows with cricket balls or accidentally called their children names you shouldn't (like "poof" but I honestly didn't know what it meant and once my parents explained it to me I didn't go using it willy nilly anymore). The toffee section had a big warning about how you needed adult help for melting and pouring molten sugar - that never appealed to me as it sounded like too much potential for messing up and not being able to eat the end product (and I think my folks were kind of glad they didn't need to stand over a small child boiling sugar on the stove). There was a family favourite recipe for melting moments in the "afternoon tea" section that my parents would bribe me to make them.

The coconut ice recipe was so easy - no baking even necessary - and had the lucky side benefit of a using tin of condensed milk, which would mean there was an empty tin for cleaning up with my child sized finger to get every last drip and drop out, mmmm. I remember my dad telling me that when he was a recruit in the navy a tube of condensed milk would be part of their survival kit. They would add it to their coffee in place of milk or just squeeze it right from the tube into their mouths when they needed some sugar; perhaps the naval life might have potential afterall. I only the made the slice a couple of times, but each time I would make sure it had crumbly edges and wasn't too careful with it so that, once sliced, there was more that wasn't good enough to give away and more that could go into my belly :)