Golden Gaytime Recipe: Homemade Toffee and Vanilla Bars

Golden Gaytime is a Streets ice cream on a stick, sold in Australia: toffee and vanilla flavoured ice cream, dipped in a choc coating and covered in crunchy biscuit crumbs (Streets). This recipe is a home take, not the factory formula. It layers toffee and vanilla ice cream, both churned from one egg custard, in moulds, dips the frozen bars in milk chocolate and rolls them in toasted malt biscuit crumbs with honeycomb.

Prep Time: 1 hour | Cook Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 13 hours 55 minutes (including 4 hours chilling and 8 hours 30 minutes freezing) | Servings: 8 bars

Difficulty: Medium | Calories: ~500 per serving

How Close Is This to a Shop-Bought Golden Gaytime?

Close in shape and layers, different in make-up. The Streets ingredient list opens with reconstituted skim milk or buttermilk, milk solids and cream, followed by sugar, vegetable oil, wheat flour and glucose syrup. Gelatine, cocoa powder, emulsifiers, vegetable gums and malt extract come further down (Streets). Wikipedia calls the coating compound chocolate and the crumbs “vanilla biscuit-like” (Wikipedia).

A home kitchen can’t copy that, so each part here has a stand-in. In the delicious. Australia video above, Wazza attempts to recreate the bar too. Egg-yolk custard makes the ice cream. A golden syrup toffee sauce goes through half of it to make the toffee layer. Real milk chocolate, thinned with coconut oil, forms the shell, and malt biscuits toasted in butter, mixed with crushed honeycomb candy, make the crumb.

Expect a bigger, richer bar. One Streets stick is a 78 g serving with 236 kcal on its label (Streets). The estimate for each bar in this recipe is about 500 calories, mostly from the cream, the toffee and the chocolate shell.

Wikipedia says Streets appears to embrace the camp name. Its product page still ends with “it’s hard to have a Gaytime on your own” (Streets), a tagline Wikipedia dates to the 1980s. Wikipedia also records a rainbow Golden Gaytime made in 2017 in support of the LGBT community. After a 2021 online petition to rename the bar, Streets stated it would not change the name (Wikipedia).

What Moulds and Sticks Do You Need?

For a Golden Gaytime shape, use silicone ice cream bar moulds: flat, oblong cavities with one rounded end and a slot for the stick. Cavities of about 90 ml (3 fl oz) take this batch in 8 bars. Silicone peels off frozen ice cream without warm water, which keeps the surface cold and firm for dipping. Any spare ice cream can go into a small tub. For a sharp line between the two layers, give the half-filled moulds 20 minutes in the freezer before the vanilla goes on.

Tenina’s Golden Gaytimes use silicone moulds too. She puts the sticks in, divides the ice cream between the moulds, taps them on the bench to settle air bubbles, and freezes them overnight or for 24 hours (Tenina). Plain flat wooden ice cream sticks are the right shape; round skewers let the bar spin when you dip it.

No moulds? Line a loaf tin with baking paper, spread in the toffee ice cream, then the vanilla, and freeze it solid. Lift it out, cut 8 bars with a hot knife, make a slit in the end of each and push in a stick. Give the bars another hour in the freezer before dipping.

If your ice cream maker has a bowl that goes in the freezer, check its manual for how long it needs there before churning. That time isn’t counted in the times above.

How Do You Get the Chocolate and Crumbs to Stay On?

Coconut oil does most of the work. America’s Test Kitchen explains that coconut oil is extremely high in saturated fat, which makes it solid at room temperature and brittle when colder. Its topping, 2 parts melted coconut oil to 3 parts melted chocolate, set into a shatteringly thin shell over ice cream (America’s Test Kitchen). Chowhound gives coconut oil’s melting point as 76°F and suggests coconut oil at one-third to one-quarter of the weight of the solid ingredients (Chowhound). This recipe uses the lower amount, a quarter: 75 g of oil to 300 g of chocolate.

Temperature comes next. Tenina keeps stirring her chocolate until it is cool and glossy, and warns it needs to be quite cool or you will have problems coating the ice creams (Tenina). Aim for about 30°C (86°F) on a thermometer, when the coating still pours freely but feels only barely warm.

The crumbs must go on in the few seconds before the shell sets. Have the crumb tray next to the glass before the first bar leaves the freezer. Tenina unmoulds only 2 or 3 bars at a time, dips each in a glass tall enough to cover it in one motion, and rolls it in the crumb straight away. If the crumb won’t cover the whole bar, she says to focus on the top and sides (Tenina).

Most of the chocolate stays behind, because the glass has to be full enough to cover a bar. Chowhound says leftovers keep in a jar in the cupboard and go back in the microwave if the oil separates (Chowhound).

Ingredients for Homemade Golden Gaytime

For the Custard Base:

1 cup (240 ml) heavy cream, divided
3/4 cup (180 ml) whole milk
1/3 cup (65 g) caster or granulated sugar
1/8 teaspoon fine salt
3 large egg yolks
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

For the Toffee Sauce:

3 tablespoons (40 g) unsalted butter
1/4 cup (55 g) packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons (40 g) golden syrup
1/4 cup (60 ml) heavy cream
Pinch of salt

For the Biscuit Crumb:

5 oz (150 g) malt biscuits or digestive biscuits
2 tablespoons (30 g) unsalted butter
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 oz (30 g) honeycomb candy (cinder toffee), finely crushed

For the Chocolate Coating:

10 1/2 oz (300 g) milk chocolate, finely chopped
1/3 cup (75 g) refined coconut oil

Step-by-Step Instructions

Step 1: Cook the Custard Base

1Heat the milk, 1/2 cup (120 ml) of the cream, the sugar and the salt in a saucepan over medium heat until steam rises and small bubbles form at the edge. Don’t let it boil. Whisk the egg yolks in a bowl, then whisk in about half the hot milk in a thin stream. Pour everything back into the pan and stir over medium-low heat with a silicone spatula for 4 to 6 minutes, until the custard coats the spatula and reads 77°C to 80°C (170°F to 175°F). Strain it into a bowl holding the remaining cream and the vanilla, cover and chill for at least 4 hours.

A hand stirring smooth, pale yellow custard with a red silicone spatula in a stainless steel saucepan on a gas hob, the other hand holding the pan handle, beside a fine-mesh sieve over a glass bowl and a dish of eggshells — Step 1- Cook the Custard Base

Step 2: Make the Toffee Sauce

2Start the toffee by melting the butter in a small, heavy pan at medium heat. Add the brown sugar and golden syrup and stir for about 2 minutes, until the sugar dissolves and the mixture bubbles. Stir in the cream and simmer for 2 minutes more, until the sauce turns glossy. Add the salt, pour the sauce into a small bowl and chill it next to the custard. It has to be cold before it meets the ice cream.

A hand pouring cream from a small white jug into bubbling golden-brown toffee sauce in a stainless steel saucepan while the other hand stirs with a wooden spoon, on a gas hob — Step 2- Make the Toffee Sauce

Step 3: Toast the Biscuit Crumb

3Crush the biscuits in a freezer bag with a rolling pin until most pieces are the size of coarse breadcrumbs, with a few the size of peas. Melt the butter in a wide frying pan set to medium, then tip in the crumbs and brown sugar. Stir for 3 to 4 minutes, until they darken a shade and smell toasty. Spread them on a lined tray to cool completely, then mix in the honeycomb. Tip the crumb into a shallow tray, ready for dipping.

Hands stirring golden-brown toasted biscuit crumbs with a wooden spoon in a stainless steel frying pan on a gas hob, beside a baking tray lined with paper and a glass bowl of honeycomb candy pieces — Step 3- Toast the Biscuit Crumb

Step 4: Churn and Fill the Moulds

4Churn the cold custard in an ice cream maker as its manual directs, until it is as thick as soft-serve. Scrape half into a second bowl and fold in the cold toffee sauce. Fill 8 silicone ice cream bar moulds halfway with the toffee ice cream, then top up with the vanilla ice cream and smooth the tops. Knock the moulds gently on the bench to release trapped air, then push a flat wooden stick into each one. Freeze for at least 8 hours or overnight.

A hand spreading soft vanilla ice cream with a metal spoon over a toffee ice cream layer in a grey silicone mould of oblong, rounded-end cavities, each showing a caramel rim, beside bowls of vanilla and toffee ice cream and a pile of flat wooden sticks — Step 4- Churn and Fill the Moulds

Step 5: Melt the Chocolate Coating

5Line a tray that fits flat in your freezer with baking paper and put it in the freezer. Melt the chocolate and coconut oil in a heatproof bowl in the microwave in 30-second bursts, or over barely simmering water, stirring until smooth. Keep stirring off the heat until it cools to about 30°C (86°F), when it feels barely warm but still pours freely. Pour it into a tall, narrow glass deep enough to take a whole bar.

A hand pouring glossy melted milk chocolate from a glass bowl, with a red silicone spatula in it, into a clear drinking glass that the other hand steadies, beside a small board of chopped chocolate — Step 5- Melt the Chocolate Coating

Step 6: Dip and Crumb the Bars

6Unmould 2 or 3 bars, leaving the rest in the freezer. Hold one by its stick, plunge it into the chocolate in a single motion, lift it out and let the excess drip back for 2 to 3 seconds. Straight away, lay it in the crumb tray, scatter crumbs over the top and press them on before the shell sets. Move it to the frozen tray and repeat with the rest. Freeze the bars for 30 minutes until the coating is hard, then let each one stand for 2 to 3 minutes before eating.

A hand holding a freshly dipped ice cream bar by its wooden stick over a tray of biscuit crumbs and honeycomb pieces while the other hand scatters crumbs onto the dripping chocolate, beside a glass of melted chocolate and a lined tray of finished bars — Step 6- Dip and Crumb the Bars

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you make a Golden Gaytime without an ice cream maker?

Yes: swap the custard for a no-churn base. Whip 1 1/4 cups (300 ml) cold heavy cream to soft peaks and fold in 2/3 cup (200 g) sweetened condensed milk and the vanilla. Fold the cold toffee sauce through half of it, then layer both into the moulds and freeze as written. Skip the custard, the egg yolks, the milk and the sugar.

What is a Golden Gaytime called in New Zealand?

Cookie Crumble. Wikipedia lists it under that name in New Zealand and describes it as toffee and vanilla ice cream dipped in compound chocolate and wrapped in vanilla biscuit-like crumbs on a wooden stick (Wikipedia).

Can you use a different chocolate for the coating?

Yes. Dark chocolate works at the same weight and coconut oil ratio, with a more bitter shell. Tenina coats her version in Callebaut gold chocolate, which she says tastes slightly of caramel, and suggests white chocolate if you can’t find it, warning that the end result will be different (Tenina).

How long do homemade Golden Gaytimes keep?

Several months in the freezer, going by Tenina’s recipe, once the coating has fully set and the bars sit in an airtight container (Tenina). Wrap each bar in a strip of baking paper first so the crumb crusts don’t fuse together in the box.