There was a list that has floated around for years titled “You know you’re Chinese when…” and proceeded to list 100 items that were frighteningly true. One of the points was “You have Tupperware in your fridge with three bites of rice or one leftover chicken wing”. I am also loathe to throw out food and indeed you may not find a single leftover chicken wing (I would have just eaten it) but I always seem to have leftover icing. I always seem to make too much of it, especially for cupcakes and cakes and whilst this is slightly deliberate in that I loathe running out of icing (so inconvenient mid piping) it means that there’s always a surplus and eating it  straight from the container by the spoonful is not recommended if you want to fit into your clothes.

Dear Reader, you know I don’t often insist that you make a recipe but if you happen to love carrot cake I’m going to have to insist that you make this ice cream. It is quite simply, heaven in an ice cream form. When Mr NQN came home from work I was so excited I was jumping up and down asking him to try it. He’s not a huge carrot cake eater but he adored it.

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The onslaught of Summer heat in Australia can be oppressive when the temperature hits above 40 degrees C. You just don’t want to move, you just cannot move no matter how hard you try and the thought of leaving air conditioned comfort fills you with dread. It’s at times like these that you transform to a Winter lover and fantasise of snow. Sweat pours from your brow although I should take the chance to confess something about myself. I can’t really sweat. That’s why I feel the heat that much more than everyone else as my very own inbuilt air conditioning system is faulty. So I absolutely need cool drinks and desserts to help me through the day.

This is really based on the Ice Kacang dessert from Singapore and Malaysia but of course it’s not entirely faithful so that’s why I haven’t put any claims forth or called it Ice Kacang. For starters I don’t think that they would use Pomegranate syrup on theirs and instead of fruit they use sweetned red beans and palm seeds. I’ve made a version which is more Western in flavour for the simple reason that I didn’t have the Asian ingredients to hand. I can imagine pursits clucking amongst themselves “Coconut! Mango! Cherries and Ice Cream, that’s not an Ice Kacang tsk tsk!”. I made this last year for my friend Queen Viv, M and her boys and they loved the sweet coolness and immediately asked me for the recipe.

You can use an ice shaver for this but I don’t really have any room for single use items in my kitchen so I use a food processor which does a good enough job. What you do need is syrup, sweetened condensed milk (in a tube works best), fruit and the a big spoon to tunnel into the snow capped mountain. I used young Coconut meat which you can find at most supermarkets nowadays (and the juice itself is delicious), lychees, ice cream and achacha fruit which is a new type of fruit which is similar to Mangosteen which is one of my favourite fruit. Sadly I’ve yet to have a good Mangosteen here in Australia but opening these up is much easier, they’re much more reasonably priced and they’re just as sweetly gorgeous (and the season has just started yay!).

With the young coconut, you’ll need a very, very sharp and heavy knife and even then my chef’s knife wasn’t really a match for it. I kept banging and banging using the thick base of the knife (no use breaking an knife for a coconut no matter how delicious the innards are!) and I found it best to summon up any inner rage and beware your fingers. It will give way eventually and then some delicious coconut water will come out. Have a bowl ready to catch this delicious water. Once the coconut has drained then take a spoon and scrape away the smooth white coconut layer inside and drink the juice separately.

This also happens to be fabulous for kids and relatively low in fat particularly if you use a low fat ice cream or just one scoop. They love towers of colours and digging at things and of course the sweetness. Ah yes the sweet coolness, there’s nothing quite like the ice cold trickle of the syrup, fruit and ice down a parched throat. And raising an arm to spoon this in is the most I can do most days.

So tell me Dear Reader, how do you beat the heat?

Snow Sundae Dessert

Makes 1 medium to large bowl (serves 2)

• 1 tray of ice cubes
• Fruit Syrup (make your own Pomegranate syrup here or buy one)
• Sweetened condensed milk, chilled
• 1/2 whole Young Coconut, chilled and cut open, the sweet white meat removed
• Fruit such as lychees, achacha, mango cubes or cherries, chilled and cut up ready to use
• 2 scoops of ice cream, cold (obviously )

Buyer’s tip: Achacha fruit are available at Eveleigh Markets, Sydney.

1. Take out everything just before using. Place 1 tray of ice cubes in the blender and blend until it resembles shaved ice. Place a scoop of ice cream in a bowl and add some fruit and coconut meat at the bottom. Add the shaved ice on top of this and pour some syrup over and then douse liberally with some sweetened condensed milk. Add extra scoop of ice cream and the add more fruit around it. Serve immediately.

I don’t encourage food snobbery but there are some things that I just cannot abide by and one of them is fake fruit flavour. When I was young, we’d get a tub of Neapolitan ice cream (and it was always Neopolitan, certainly none of this gorgeous gourmet ice cream you see these days) and despite my natural graviation towards anything pink, I’d always give the faux strawberry ice cream a definite miss. It seemed just not quite right to me and not strawberry like enough. Although I should just target faux strawberry – I’ve found the worst offenders for the faux fruit flavour banana and cherry which taste nothing like the actual food.

Rant over I’ll get off my (pink) soapbox and explain how overjoyed I am that Summer fruits are coming back into season. This last weekend I filled my fruit bowl with Pomegranates, Mangoes, Strawberries, Nashis and Papaya. So I wanted to do something with some of this fruit but also combining it with mascarpone which I had made just before. The heat this week also convinced me that it needed to be an ice cream of some sort too.

If you had a quick glance at the ingredients list you’ll see that I have balsamic vinegar and black pepper. Honestly, I haven’t taken leave of my senses, they’re both fantastic accompaniments to strawberries but of course you could leave these out or try one at a time but to me it just enhances the taste. I bought these mini cones a while back and miraculously they survived the move and I placed them in these adorable pastel mini tin pails I found at Pink Frosting, where I have been given the rather lovely title of “expert” and I pick my favourite products from their range once every 2 months!

The ice cream is smooth and cheesecake like because of the mascarpone. In fact with some of the cones, I crushed some biscuits and rolled the tops of them in them and then froze them for a later party which I think qualifies them as strawberry mascarpone cheesecake ice creams. The biscuit crumbs allowed them not to stick together – a practical measure you see and you had better believe that I pretended that they were supposed to be like that all along!

So tell me Dear Reader, what is your favourite Summer fruit and how do you like to eat it? On it’s own, in a salad or in an ice cream or sorbet? If you missed out on listening to my interview on the ABC702 Food at Eleven program with Simon Marnie, here is a link! I’m there with Demis and Helen discussing our favourite events from the Sydney International Food Festival. Time really flies when you’re having fun and before I knew it, the interview had finished (although will I ever get used to the sound of my own voice? ).

And because it’s Wallpaper Wednesday, here is a Wallpaper to help you get through Hump Day! Chee Chong Fun Rice Noodles.

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