X for Xīn Xīlán / New Zealand ~ Hokey Pokey Ice Cream

Event: BM #44, Around the world (A - Z Series)      
Choice of Country: Xīn Xīlán / New Zealand
Capital City: Wellington
Official Language: English, Māori and NZ sign language

People who follow my blog regularly might have noticed that I have been on a blogging this marathon with the theme 'Around the World in 30 Days' - cooking from 26 countries around the world, going in an alphabetical order. Today it is the turn of letter 'X' and since there is no country starting with that letter we had a choice to cook from any city in the world that started with the alphabet 'X'. 
My planning for the marathon started with this letter and without putting much thought into it, I settled on a Mexican city called 'Xalapa' in the first five minutes of my research since the city and the state that it comes from had some dishes of their own. However recently I had a Eureka moment when my daughter who was going through a story book connected to the old silk route innocently mentioned to me that Persia is present day Iran pointing to a map. I got the idea for checking out the alternative names for the countries and luckily landed here. I found 15 countries that had alternative names starting with 'X' in other languages. Valli gave a green signal that I could go with alternative names and so my pick for today is going to be Xīn Xīlán which is a Mandarin Chinese name for New Zealand.
New Zealand is an island country in the southwestern Pacific ocean. It has a diverse British-based cuisine and largely driven by local ingredients and seasonal variations. The main meal of the day when families gather is dinner which is also known as 'tea'. Lolly cake, Hangi food, Pavlova, Anzac biscuits and Hokey Pokey ice cream are some of the dishes that developed in New Zealand.
 
The recipe I had bookmarked earlier came handy earlier for today's post. Hokey pokey ice cream is a flavor of ice cream in New Zealand, consisting of plain vanilla ice cream with small, solid lumps of honeycomb toffee and is the most popular one after vanilla ice cream there. Hokey pokey is a New Zealand term for honeycomb toffee where as in the 19th and the early 20th centuries, it was a slang term for ice cream in several parts of the world. I had used honey instead of the golden syrup and these crispy bites add a nice twist to already yummy vanilla ice cream.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup golden syrup / honey
1 tsp baking soda
Vanilla ice cream to serve 

Method:
* Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil / parchment paper or a silicon mat and keep it handy.
* Add sugar and honey to a medium sized saucepan and stir constantly on low heat until it starts to boil. 

* Boil for 5 minutes more on a very gentle heat taking care not to burn the mixture. (I had checked another recipe which gave a helpful hint in avoiding this turning into a chewing mess. Cook until it reaches a hard ball consistency.)
* Remove the mixture from heat and add baking soda to the pan and whisk vigorously until the mixture starts to froth. You would notice the mixture ballooning up and once it stops, immediately pour the mixture onto the prepare sheet.

* Let the mixture cool down and once when it is solid, break it into chunks. Store them in an airtight container.

* If you are preparing your own ice cream then you can stir it into the ice cream mixture before freezing it. Or add some chunks to your vanilla ice cream.


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