Licking the best

Kohu Road sets a standard of ice cream that few other commercial makers match in a country that produces over 100 million litres of the stuff a year and imports another three million litres.

 
Since the first hand-cranked ice cream freezer was patented in the US in 1843, the most popular commercial flavours the world over are (in order); vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. Among the world’s fastest and thirstiest ice cream lickers, Kiwis place hokey pokey second to vanilla.

Made in West Auckland, Kohu Road ice cream comes in just nine flavours and hokey pokey isn’t one of them. Its most popular flavour is dark chocolate flavoured with 72 percent cocoa sourced from France (and a pinch of sea salt), then vanilla and golden syrup – a flavour maybe destined to become as iconic as hokey pokey.

New Zealand regulations say ice cream only has to contain at least 10percent milk fat and 20percent total milk solids by weight. The rest of the recipe is imagination.

What makes Kohu Road ice cream so understanding (and expensive) is that it’s made from just a few basic ingredients – cream, sugar, eggs (organic) and quality flavourings. This means no artificial flavours, colours, emulsifiers, stabilisers, preservatives, gum fillers, or pumped air. The result is very soft-textured ice cream but a low shelf life of four to five months.

The operation was set up in 2007 by Greg Hall and his partner Yayoi, a Japanese chef (hence the green tea flavoured ice cream).

“Chemical flavours and empty calories are the bane of modern food,” says Greg on the Kohu website, summing up his cuisine philosophy. 

And they are not the only ice cream manufactures making small-batch and organic ice creams.  It is not until you take a look at the ice cream awards, organised annually by the Ice Cream Manufacturers’ Association, that you get an idea of how many clever, lip-smacking flavours from boutique ice cream producers are available in this country.

Examples are: Cookies & Cream and Lavender & Ginger (Rush Munro’s); Peanut Butter Nutter and Gooey Caramel (Fonterra); Peaches’n’Cream (Deep South); Gum Drops (Emerald Foods); and Poached Pear and Blue Cheese (Zest Gelato).

Sweet on sweet on sweet

Foodstyle paired up a litre tub of Kohu Golden Syrup ice cream with date, walnut, chocolate pudding served with manuka honey, butterscotch, and whiskey cream sauce. 

Sticky date pudding recipes have been in vogue over the past decade and are one of the English ‘nursery’ or ‘boarding school’ pudding revival recipes from the 1990s. In our experience, the ‘sticky part’ comes down to how much syrup your want to drown the pudding in, so this is a lighter version to leave room for the distinctive ice cream flavour.

This volume will make at least eight individual puddings or a ‘loaf’ that can be sliced for the same number. If making for fewer, just halve the ingredients.

Ingredients (room temperature)

200g pitted dates (coarsely chopped)
5ml (1 teaspoon) bicarbonate soda
150g raw sugar
100g butter (chopped)
200ml boiling water (or fruit juice)

2 large eggs (whisked)

200g self-raising flour (make sure it is fresh)
1 teaspoon ground mixed spice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
50g walnuts (chopped)
50g dark chocolate (chopped)
                   
Sauce
100ml runny manuka honey
200ml runny cream
100ml butter
50ml whiskey or cognac (optional)

We tried date pudding recipes that creamed the butter and sugar and those that didn’t and found not a lot of difference – so we have gone the easiest way. 

Into a small deep bowl place the pitted coarsely chopped dates, baking (bicarbonate) soda, raw sugar and butter . Pour in 200ml of boiling liquid. Stir with a wooden spoon and let mixture cool down and the dates swell and soften. Add the whisked eggs.

Combine flour, spices, chopped walnuts and chocolate pieces then fold into the wet mixture very gently but thoroughly. Don’t wait around before spooning the mixture into your cooking moulds.

Bake at 180C in a pre-heated oven for 20-30 minutes, depending on if you are using individual moulds or a one large mould. Oven temperatures are all over the place with different brands and temperatures controls (fan etc). You can always invest in one of those small oven temperature gauges but always keep an eye on the baking and get ready to place tin foil over the top to stop it burning. As always, a skewer coming out clean from the mixture is a reliable indicator of a baked pud or cake.

The sauce

Place butter, honey and cream in a pan over a low heat, stir and bring mixture to a bubble, then reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes until the sugar has dissolved and the sauce has thickened and darkened in colour. 

Serve date pudding and sauce with large scoop of soft Kohu Golden Syrup ice cream.

Winter 2010

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