Colesworth jacking up the cost of Ice Magic? You can make some with chocolate and coconut oil to work out much cheaper.
There are heaps of recipes for “chocolate shell” so try them out
In the US, we call it Turtle Shell and I always avoided eating it as a kid because I thought actual turtles were killed to make it.
Oh yeah, you’ve got soup turtles and dessert turtles, and you gotta make sure they’re ripe
/straight face
I wonder if that is a regional name for it. I don’t think I ever knew a generic name for it, growing up on the west coast. I always knew it as Magic Shell, which I think is a brand name
Midwest checking in, always Magic Shell, agree that is brand name. Never heard Turtle Shell either.
Midwest, never heard it called Magic Shell or Turtle shell. Its just a chocolate dipped cone.
Got a bit of a shock when the recipe says to use semisweet chocolate chips and they show up for $56 at Woolies… I guess dark chocolate chips would be better…
Also the coconut oil in bottles seems pricey. Copha is cheaper.
Hang on. Copha. Dark chocolate chips. We’re making chocolate crackles, aren’t we? 🤤
I also kinda wish I didn’t notice the Homemade dark chocolate recipe at the bottom of the page 😬. If I’m gonna make one, I should really try the other…
Thanks!
Yikes! Tell em they’re dreaming. Really I think any kind of chocolate would probably do. Chopped bar chocolate is cheaper and actually melts better as chips are made to hold their shape when baked. The Coles Belgian dark chocolate is very decent for the price.
I have seen coconut oil in jars at Aldi that didn’t seem too expensive but I’ve forgotten how much now. Edit: About $4 for a 300g jar. Or $3.60 for 250g at Coles. Copha would be interesting though, it might set harder.
Yeah, copha might be weird and go rock hard.
Good tip about using normal chocolate!
It may not work out that much cheaper in the end, but seems like the quality would be higher and you wouldn’t have as long a list of weird ingredients like in the store bought choc top hard shells.
Yeah. I guess it’s more useful if you already have the coconut oil and chocolate anyway, or need to use the oil up before it turns
I’m definitely gonna try it once I get rid of the one in the cupboard now.
I love these simple hack type of things! And anything with 2 ingredients is right up my alley!
Apparently you can use whatever neutral cooking oil you have so that should make it cheaper
I finally got around to trying it.
From Aldi, I grabbed:
- Choceur Dark Chocolate for $3.79.
- Oh So natural Coconut oil for $4.19
- As an aside, I was surprised to find this ‘oil’ was totally solid. It had the same consistency as a bar of copha, and I couldn’t even put a spoon into it. I had to nuke it in the microwave to get any out.
I used this recipe and used about 1 row and 2 squares from the next row of chocolate (so a little less than a 1/4 of the chocolate) and 2 tsp (10g) of coconut oil. This made enough for 2 serves for me, but I don’t drown my ice cream. So, one 200g chocolate would make about 8 serves. And one 300g jar of coconut oil would make about 60 serves.
Now for the important part; how did it look, how was the consistency and taste?
Once it was melted, I used a spoon to drizzle it over my ice cream. It flowed nicely, and after a short while, created a nice shell. I may have added a bit more of this than the usual Ice Magic, so in some spots, it did seem a bit thicker. But a couple of cracks with a spoon and no problem. It looked lush, and the consistency was good.
Now on to the taste. I’m a simple man. I put this over vanilla ice cream. I want to taste vanilla and chocolate. But in some cases there was a definitive taste of coconut. Now, the ratio of chocolate topping to ice cream varies by spoonful to spoonful. There were some spoonfuls I was thinking, “OMG this is soooooo much better. The choccy is delicious, and a very subtle hint of coconut with the vanilla”, and other spoonfuls I was thinking “WTF, I get chocolate, but the coconut is obliterating any vanilla in the ice cream! No!”
So, I might experiment with the next batch by cutting back a little on the coconut oil, and see how that goes. The other option is to embrace the coconuty in something different. I’m thinking a white choccy with a coconut might be interesting to try. Seeing as I have about 7 bars of chocolate to buy to get rid of this jar of coconut oil, I can experiment 😁
That sounds great. I hear that the coconut taste is less strong with more refined coconut oils. If you’re having issues using the oil up it’s also a general cooking oil for things like curries
