Hokey Pokey Ice Cream

Hokey pokey is honeycomb toffee - sugar and golden syrup with baking soda stirred in at the end, which foams the mixture into a light, brittle, aerated candy. Folded through vanilla ice cream in solid lumps it produces the second most popular ice cream flavour in New Zealand after plain vanilla, and it has been made commercially here since the early 1980s, when the current lump-form version replaced an earlier attempt at a butterscotch ripple. The name is older than the ice cream and was used for the toffee itself well before. Outside New Zealand it is unusual - Britain has honeycomb in chocolate bars, Australia sells a similar thing, but a mainstream honeycomb ice cream flavour is close to a national peculiarity. The lumps are the test: good hokey pokey has pieces that still crunch, cheap versions have them dissolved into grit.

What you actually see

• The honeycomb lumps - brittle toffee pieces, which should still crunch.
• The rank - the country's second-favourite flavour after vanilla.
• The 1980s version - the lump form that replaced a butterscotch ripple.
• The rarity - close to unknown as a standard flavour elsewhere.

When to go

Year-round; summer, December to February, is when everyone eats it. Any dairy, supermarket or ice cream shop stocks it.

Honest expectations

Very sweet - it is toffee in ice cream. Cheaper brands let the honeycomb dissolve, which loses the point. Not a regional speciality to hunt down; it is genuinely everywhere.

Nearby

Sold nationwide; independent ice cream shops in most towns make their own.