Honeydukes Pink Coconut Ice | Harry Potter Series

While candy making is a fine chemistry experiment, not every Honeydukes recipe needs to be time consuming or complicated. The more modern recipes for pink coconut ice involve no cooking, and the ingredients have changed over the last century to be foolproof.
So whether you’re wanting an easy recipe to toss in for your Harry Potter menu or just want to make your Harry Potter movie night that bit more themed, this pink coconut ice recipe is it.
According to The Oxford Companion to Food, pink coconut ice begins its history in England. While the coconut is a tropically grown fruit, it’s been available in England since the 16th century, thanks to sea trade. While it’s suggested that cooks didn’t originally know what to do with ‘coco-nut’, it would eventually be added to recipes, including coconut ice.
One original coconut ice recipe from 1888, found in ‘The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook’ during the time when the British lived in India, calls for only sugar, water and grated ‘cocoanut’.
A few decades later in the 1910s and 1920s, we find the recipes starting to be adapted, supposedly as cooks began to try for a smoother, less gritty, and more shelf-stable product. Different recipes switch out the sugar and water base for fondant and gum arabic water, sugar and glucose or fondant and cream. While those recipes with sugar and glucose are still boiled, the recipes calling for fondant are no-cook, as the sugar has already been processed.
Today the more common recipes include icing sugar for a finer, less gritty texture, cream of tartar to prevent the sugar from crystallizing, and condensed milk, as well as the vanilla essence, coconut, and food colouring from the original recipes.
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Honeydukes Pink Coconut Ice | Harry Potter Series
Ingredients
- 2 cups icing sugar
- 1/4 tsp cream of tartar
- 395g can of condensed milk
- 1 capful vanilla essence
- 3 1/2 cup desiccated coconut
- few drops pink food colouring
- edible sprinkles in white and pink (optional)
Instructions
- In a mixer, start by mixing the icing sugar and the cream of tartar.
- Then add in the condensed milk followed by the vanilla essence, then the desiccated coconut.
- Once it’s well mixed together, take half out and place in a bowl.
- To the ingredients left in the mixer, add in a few drops of the pink food colouring and mix until the colour is fully stirred in. You can add in the sprinkles at the same time if you wish.
- Spray a square or rectangular cake pan with cooking spray, then lay down baking paper on top.
- Press the pink mixture into the cake pan, then press the white mixture on top.
- Smooth surface with wet hands, then dust white/silver/clear sprinkles on top.
- Place in the fridge for a few hours, then cut and serve.
References:
- Davidson, A. The Oxford Companion to Food, Oxford University Press, 1999.
- Steel, Florence Annie Webster; Gardiner, Grace. “Cocoanut Ice”. The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook: Giving the Duties of Mistress and Servants, the General Management of the House and Practical Recipes for Cooking in All Its Branches, 1888.
- Neil, Marion H. Candies and Bonbons and How To Make Them.David McKay, Philadelphia, 1913.
- Jerome, Helen. Sweet-Making for All. Thomas Nelson and Sons, Ltd. London, 1924
Hi Bryton! Question for you, did you use sweetened or unsweetened desiccated coconut? Thanks!
I”m pretty sure it was unsweetened 🙂
Is this a treat that can be made early and frozen?
Is the cream of tartar extremely important? Is there any alternative? I don’t have any, and I can’t go out and buy t :/
★★★★★
You can leave it out. It’s there to keep the sugar from crystallising.
Hi, I’d like to make this one week before a party, can I make it and then freeze it?
I haven’t tested out freezing them so I’m not sure if it would change the texture. I’d say if you could make them 2, maybe 3, days before the party, they should be ok if stored in the fridge in a container.