Snap,
Crackle—Slice??
More
About the Australasian “Slice”
Continuing
the saga of how the frightening Australasian “slice” came to be…
I’ve already
looked at the history of baked shortcakes, sweetened condensed milk and rolled
oats in relation to the development of that new Antipodean tradition, the “slice,” in “Condensed Cholesterol &
Sugar Blindness”,
Just to
remind you if the term is strange to you: a “slice” is a kind of flat, low
cake. Slices are made as a whole but then cut up into portion-sized pieces
before storing and/or serving. They may consist of merely one layer, or of
several, with or without an icing or frosting. They may be baked or unbaked.
The slice started off as quite a low-sugar, relatively harmless, quick and
easy-to-make treat for the family. Today’s slices are frighteningly over-sweet,
cholesterol-laden, and just plain fattening.
“Slices” in
several forms, or at least their predecessors, began to appear during the 20th
century, but the modern form didn’t really surface until the 1960s-1970s, at
which point it still hadn’t, as far as I can see, received its name. By the
1990s the term was accepted usage. The factors which influenced the development
of the slice go back much further than the Sixties. Today I’m going to look at
the following aspects of baking which would eventually influence the
development of the slice:
Packaged
cereals
Sweets
made with copha
Bought
biscuits as an ingredient
Muesli
and other health foods
Slice Origins: Packaged Cereals in Baking & Sweets
Almost as
soon as a new ingredient is introduced, inspired cooks want to do something
different with it—that is, not using it for its intended purpose. Cornflakes
came first, then rice bubbles. Pretty soon the home cooks and amateur chefs of
the breakfast-cereal-eating world were at it.
Packaged
Cereals: Cornflakes
You say “corn
flakes,” I say “cornflakes”… However you spell it, the history of the first
commercial breakfast food is a scream. Look up “Corn flakes” on Wikipedia. Did
you know that corn flakes prevent masturbation? Oh, yeah. Too right.
Be that as it may, cornflakes were
introduced in America during the 1890s by a Dr Kellogg as a health food for
sanatorium patients, and pretty soon became a breakfast food for the general
public, marketed by the Kellogg Company, which was granted a U.S. patent for the
process in 1896.
More than a century on, they’re still being
consumed for breakfast in giant quantities, and they turn up regularly in
homemade slices and biscuits.
How did it happen? Well, the huge, I mean
HUGE advertising push by the Kellogg Company had more than something to do with
it. Also, the company’s claim they’re quick and convenient for the home cook is
so right. Especially if the alternative is standing at the stove for ages
stirring the porridge, in the knowledge that it won’t get eaten if it goes
lumpy or gets burned or, more latterly, watching the porridge like a hawk in
the knowledge that if you take your eye off it for a split second it’ll rise up
and flood the microwave in a horrible sticky mess. And many people, like Dr
Kellogg’s patients over a hundred years back, actually like cornflakes.
Cornflakes spread very quickly throughout
the English-speaking world. No, people didn’t have the Internet or convenient
handheld electronic gizmos to destroy the inner ear, addle the brain and ruin
the eyesight, but they had newspapers and the telegraph. Australasian
newspapers of the second half of the 19th century are full of reports, both
hard news items and gossipy titbits, culled from overseas papers. The Antipodes
couldn’t not know about Kellogg’s
corn flakes, actually.
Thanks to the National Library of
Australia’s wonderful service in digitising early newspapers I was able to
discover ads as early as 1905 for “Corn Flakes”: this one was in The Daily News (Perth, W.A.), Wednesday
18 January 1905:
Possibly not
impressive by our standards, no. But the ads kept on coming, gradually getting
more sophisticated, and people kept on eating cornflakes (not only Kellogg’s,
there were several rivals in the early days), and so…
The Antipodean Rivals: “Kellogg’s Corn Flakes” &
“Post Toasties”, 1914-1925
(C. W. Post
had been a patient at Dr Kellogg’s sanatorium.)
From the Horse’s Mouth
During the
1920s cornflakes began to appear in baked goods—though it wouldn’t surprise me
to learn that some kitchen genius, desperate for something new to give Dad and
the kids, had had the idea earlier. The Kellogg Company was quick to get into
the act, with their Home Economics Department producing this recipe for
American muffins with cornflakes. It was reprinted in an Australian paper, the Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners'
Advocate, on 11 September 1926, under the heading “DO YOU LIKE HONEY?” The
article is by “Barbara B. Brook, of Kellogg Company, Home Economics Department,
Battle Creek Michigan.”
Honey Corn Flake Muffins
One and a half cup corn flakes, two cups
milk, one and a half cup graham flour, quarter cup honey, two cups white flour,
five teaspoons baking powder, one tablespoon shortening. Mix melted shortening
with honey, add to one egg beaten lightly, then add milk. Stir in the dry
ingredients, which have been thoroughly mixed. Bake in well greased muffin tins
for thirty minutes. (Will make 32 muffins.)
The Antipodean Version
True, at that
period the Australian public probably didn't know what “graham flour” was, or
what American muffins were supposed to look like. Nevertheless cornflakes began
to appear quite regularly in the local cuisine. A New South Wales recipe in The Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers
Advocate on 23 July 1936 is called simply “Cornflakes.” It combines butter,
sugar, an egg white, chopped walnuts, and coconut with 3 cups of cornflakes and
is baked briefly in “pattycake containers.” It’s not only a precursor to the
slice, but also an early example of the sort of homemade offerings, now classed
as sweets, but at the time likely to be listed with biscuits in the cookbooks,
that would abound in the later 20th century—anything that can be crushed,
chopped, or comes in readymade small pieces being combined with something
sticky. Sounds familiar? Yes, the technique is
related to that used for slice bases.
“Canadian Wonders” appears in the South
Australian Country Women's Association’s Calendar
of Cakes around 1951: a dough is made from butter, sugar, self-raising
flour, egg, and chopped nuts and dates: you then “Roll pieces the size of small
dessertspoon in the hand and toss lightly in cornflakes” before baking for 15
to 20 minutes. It’s presumably the cornflakes that make these wonders Canadian?
The Green and Gold Cookery Book (15th
ed. (rev.), Adelaide, R.M. Osborne) published the same idea in about 1949: its
"Ginger Roughs" are made in the same way and also rolled in
cornflakes.
Cornflakes were in the standard Antipodean
baking repertoire by the mid-1950s, and the idea continued into the 1960s: the
1968 printing of the 1955 “De Luxe Edition” of the Edmonds Cookery Book ([Christchurch, N.Z.], T. J. Edmonds Ltd.),
has this little gem (why the name, probably better not to ask):
Afghans
7
ozs. Butter; 3 ozs. Sugar; 6 ozs. Flour;
1
oz. Bourneville Cocoa; 2 ozs. Cornflakes
Soften butter, add sugar and beat to a cream;
add flour, Cocoa and lastly cornflakes. Put teaspoonfuls on a greased oven tray
and bake about 15 minutes at 350° F. When cold, ice with chocolate icing and
put walnuts on top.
Slice My Cornflake
The
innovative slice-makers of recent years may use cornflakes either in the base
or in the topping of their slices!
Crush ’Em! Cornflakes in the Slice Base
I’d have said
cornflakes were a bit loose and, well, flaky, to be suitable for the base of a
slice, but I’m no baker. The experts know what to do! Pulverise them, and
combine with melted butter and sweetened condensed milk. Not a joke. The recipe
is “Choc-Coconut Slice” and its creators, the Australian Women's Weekly’s
kitchen, do warn: “This slice is sweet and rich. Serve in small pieces.” Mm.
It’s got cocoa in both the base and the icing, and judging by the lovely
illustration it's the best grade Dutch cocoa: very dark. (Cakes & Slices Cookbook, circa 1990.)
An alternative approach is to mix the
cornflakes whole into melted butter with melted marshmallows. Melted, not
chopped! The technique is used in “Macadamia Squares,” by Barbara Godfrey, in Homecooked Feasts (Sydney, ABC Books,
2008). It’s her family’s Christmas treat. I’d recommend it, but I have tried
making a slice with marshmallows, and oddly enough it came out tasting strongly
of bought marshmallows. God knows what they put in them, but it's strong stuff.
“Cornflakes in your Top-ping…”
(Sung to the
tune of Lipstick on Your Collar.)
Honey Coconut Crunch
2 cups (250g) sweet biscuit crumbs; 125g butter, melted
Topping: 3 cups
Cornflakes; 1/2 cup coconut;
1/4 cup finely chopped dried apricots;
1/4 cup finely chopped unsalted roasted
peanuts;
2 tablespoons peanut butter; 1/2 cup honey;
1 tablespoon sugar; 30g butter
Combine biscuits and [125g] butter, press
over base of 19cm x 29cm lamington pan; refrigerate while preparing topping.
Topping: Combine butter, peanut butter, honey and sugar in large
saucepan, stir constantly over heat without boiling until butter is melted and
sugar dissolved. Stir in Cornflakes, coconut, apricots and peanuts.
Press topping over base, refrigerate until
set before cutting.
(Cakes
& Slices Cookbook [by] the Australian Women's Weekly. Sydney:
Australian Consolidated Press, [1990])
I do like
peanut butter, but add in all that butter as well, and the coconut… I honestly
couldn't face it.
Packaged
Cereals: Rice Bubbles
It’s actually
a proper name: the registered trademark of the Kellogg’s cereal distributed in
Australia and NZ as “Rice Bubbles.” The cereal was first produced in the U.S.
as “Rice Krispies” and is still marketed in North America under that name. Rice
Bubbles are “made of crisped rice, which expands to form thin and hollowed out
walls that are crunchy and crisp. When milk is added to the cereal the walls
tend to collapse, creating the famous ‘Snap, crackle and pop’ sounds.” (“Rice
Krispies”, Wikipedia)
The cereal was invented by the ingenious Dr
Kellogg of cornflakes fame, and came on the market in the U.S. in 1928.
Twenty years later we still hadn’t heard of
it, at home—whether it had reached New Zealand by then, I don't know. It wasn’t
until the late 1950s/early 1960s that Mum started buying cornflakes: I remember
them in our first Auckland house, which was the second family home, stored
inconveniently out in the hot water cupboard, on the other side of the laundry
from the kitchen. Rice bubbles didn’t come into our family’s diet until well
into the Sixties, when we were in our third house.
By that time the idea of using the bubbly
breakfast cereal in baking was already well established, in other circles: “In
1939 Kellogg's employee Mildred Day concocted and published a recipe for a Camp
Fire Girls bake sale consisting of Rice Krispies, melted marshmallows, and
margarine.” (“Rice Krispies”, Wikipedia)
The Antipodean Touch
The Calendar of Cakes from the South
Australian Country Women's Association published a similar recipe in about
1951. The book gave recipes for biscuits as well as cakes, large or small. Back
then these would have been considered a type of
biscuit, in Australia:
Honey Crackles
1 tablespoon honey, 2 ozs. (60 g) butter, 3
ozs. (90 g) sugar, 5 ozs. (150 g) rice bubbles or cornflakes.
Melt honey, sugar, and butter. Pour into rice
bubbles or cornflakes and mix well together. Fill paper containers and put into
warm oven for 5 minutes.
--MRS. J. L. MITCHELL (Saddleworth).
It wasn't
until a bit later that such offerings, whether popped into the oven or left
raw, would come to be considered as sweets (confectionery) rather than
biscuits.
Sweet and Bubbly
Just one
example of the many sweets with rice bubbles that are now a norm in
Australasian cuisine. This recipe was published in 2010:
Date Balls
Date and rice bubble mixture, cooked and
rolled into balls, then dipped in coconut. This is a sweet that even those who
don't usually like dates, will love!
1 cup chopped, pitted dates; 3 cups Rice Bubbles;
1 egg, beaten; 1/4 cup sugar; 100 g butter;
1 teaspoon vanilla essence; Coconut, for rolling
Place egg, dates, butter and sugar in
saucepan. Bring to the boil, and cook for 10 minutes, stirring constantly.
Remove from heat and allow to cool. Add
vanilla essence and Rice Bubbles. Mix well.
Roll into small balls. Roll in coconut. Set
in refrigerator.
Recipe
notes: Makes 30-40. Store in
refrigerator.
(From I Tyler, August 10, 2010,
BestRecipes.com.au)
Sliced Rice Bubbles
The classic
modern slice example is “Crunchy Choc-Bubble Slice” in Cakes & Slices Cookbook (Australian Women's Weekly, circa
1990). It includes those other now classic ingredients, marshmallows, dried
fruit, and coconut. Plus the almost inevitable butter. These days most people
in Australia and New Zealand use marg (well, a vegetable-oil spread) in their
sandwiches or on their toast, so I think it must be the slice bakers who are
keeping the Australasian butter industry going. If you don’t use butter and
bung the result in the fridge your slice base is gonna fall apart, see? Unless
you use copha, which in my opinion is even worse. I’m coming to that. Meantime,
let’s look at the quintessential Rice Bubbles slice.
And look out: this one has got melted
marshmallows, again!
Crunchy Choc-Bubble Slice
1 1/2 cups Rice Bubbles; 1 cup roasted unsalted peanuts;
1 cup mixed [dried] fruit; 1 cup coconut;
100g packet white marshmallows; 60g butter
Chocolate
Icing:
1 1/2 cups icing sugar; 1 tablespoon cocoa;
1 tablespoon milk, approximately; 1 teaspoon soft butter
Grease a 25cm x 30cm Swiss roll pan.
Combine Rice Bubbles, peanuts, fruit and
coconut in large bowl. Combine marshmallows and butter in saucepan, stir
constantly over heat without boiling, until marshmallows and butter are melted;
stir into Rice Bubble mixture.
Press mixture evenly into prepared pan.
Chocolate
Icing: Sift icing sugar and cocoa into
small heatproof bowl, stir in butter and enough milk to make a stiff paste.
Stir over hot water until icing is spreadable. Spread [slice] with icing, sprinkle
with crushed nuts if desired. Refrigerate until set before cutting.
(Cakes
& Slices Cookbook (Sydney, Australian Consolidated Press, [1990?])
Slice Origins: Sweets Made With Copha
When I came
across “copha” in Australian slice recipes I had this sort of feeling that I
sort of ought to know what it was. I associated it vaguely with coconut. I was
right.
In New Zealand it’s sold as “Kremelta,”
which possibly explains why I didn't
recognise the term. But I did realise what it was: that solid white
substance that sometimes turned up in very odd-textured homemade sweets at
school fairs in the 1950s and 1960s. Not viscous, and not slimy. Kind of thick
on the tongue. Smooth. A bit like eating solid slime? These sweets, I’m glad to
report, were not nearly as nice as the homemade coconut ice and homemade fudge.
We older ones bought them with our laboriously-saved pocket money (twopence a
week, for years). –Yes, Veronica, this was before schools got all p.c., not to
say daft, and forbade the sale of home-cooked items.
“Copha” is an Australian product. The Copha
trademark was registered in 1916 by Lever Brothers (a forerunner of Unilever),
who produced the product using oil extracted from the copra imported from the
Pacific islands.
Since 1933 Copha, together with Kremelta,
has been a trademark of an Australian company called Peerless. (http://www.copha.com.au/our-story )
And what exactly is it? It’s “a form of
vegetable fat shortening made from hydrogenated coconut oil. It is 100% fat, at
least 98% of which is saturated.” (“Copha”, Wikipedia.)
If that didn't put you off, nothing will.
Coconut With Your Frîtes?
The article
in Wikipedia also tells us that “there are many suppliers of hydrogenated
coconut fat in various forms worldwide” and that “In France it is marketed as
Végétaline.” That name is familiar:
Gégé used it to cook his magnificent chips, one very cold, wet, bleak Sunday in
Paris, in 1973. Magnificent though they were, I did have reservations:
twice-cooked chips in solid coconut fat? (That’s the secret of a crisp outside:
put them in a second time when the melted coconut fat’s really hot. It works
provided you’ve started with actual freshly-sliced potatoes.)
Sweets to the Sweet
Copha has
become a favourite ingredient in the Australian sweets often known as
“Chocolate Crackles,” generally promoted as something for children to make. As the
procedure involves a lot of heat that must be properly controlled, together
with a double-boiler to melt the fat, the only part the kids can really do is
mixing and putting into paper cases—very messy, right. Fun if you’ve got the
time and the patience and don’t mind the immense clearing-up job! The sweets
have got several names, according to who’s publishing the recipe, and they
don’t always use copha. An English
version, “Chocolate Krinkles” by Katie Stewart, in The Pooh Cook Book (London, Methuen Children’s Books, 1971),
replaces the copha with melted chocolate plus a “small nut of vegetable fat.”
The possibly classic recipe consists of copha, Rice Bubbles and cocoa, and was
certainly around in the 1960s when Peerless Foods were pushing the idea in
their ads. Once you’ve mixed them up and left them to set they go almost
rock-hard.
This technique was readymade for the slice,
really.
“I’m Dreaming of a White Chr—”
No, that was
a nightmare.
What is “White Christmas”? If you don’t
know (and if you weren’t born and bred in Australia you can’t be expected to),
it’s a mixture of copha with a lot of sweet ingredients that over the years
have become standard in the slice. (If they were held together with chocolate rather
than copha the Aussies would call the result “Rocky Road”, instead.)
“White Christmas” exemplifies the use of
copha in cooking. In her recipe, Heather Gilmour writes in the early 21st century:
"I've been making this all my married life, more than 40 years. It is an
old family favourite, especially with the children.”
White Christmas
250g copha;
1 cup powdered full-cream milk;
1 cup Rice Bubbles; 1 cup sultanas;
60g glace cherries, chopped; 1 cup desiccated coconut;
60g crystallised ginger, chopped; 1 cup icing sugar
Mix together all ingredients except copha.
Melt copha in a saucepan over low heat and
stir into mixture.
Pour into greased 28-cm x 18-cm lamington
tins.
Press down into tins and then put in the
refrigerator to set.
Cut into 5-cm x 3-cm squares.
(Heather Gilmour, in Country Classics: A Collection of 500 Classic Recipes [from the
Country Women's Association of Australia] [Rev. ed.], Camberwell, Vic., Viking,
[2007])
As this book is one of the most ineptly
published I’ve ever come across, appallingly badly arranged, poorly indexed,
and with huge, glamorous and entirely unhelpful illustrations, I didn’t expect
it to give any more historical detail than the contributor could provide, and
gee, it doesn’t. Do NOT buy this book! Some of the recipes are nice, but many
of them are extremely modern and mucky, not classic unless you were born in
2001 like it was (under a different title). And once you have found a nice one
you will never find it again, unless it has a very distinctive title such as “White Christmas” that you’ve
managed to remember.
“Sweets” or “Slice”??
I did expect
the book to tell me whether the recipe is now considered as “sweets” or a “slice”,
however. Hah, hah. No, it isn’t in a section on sweets, and it isn’t in a
section on slices, and it isn’t with cakes and/or desserts. It’s all by itself
at the end, directly after, I kid you not, “Worcestershire sauce”, under a sort
of subheading which bears no relation either stylistically or logically to the
section headings: “Country Classic.”
So thanks for that, famous CWA. It ain’t
you that’s gonna tell me whether “White Christmas” should be considered a
sweetie or a slice!
The other modern versions I’ve got indicate
that “White Christmas” today is generally considered as sweets, rather than a
slice—though as you can see from the
illustration that it can be presented either as small blocks or in thin
slices! You can also see from the amount of white base as compared to the Rice
bubbles, chopped cherries, etc., that the main ingredient is most definitely
copha.
Back to Bing
The misnamed Country Classics doesn’t tell us how old
the recipe is, either. …When did Bing
Crosby’s version of the song first come out? –Nah, yonks before the film with
stunning Rosemary Clooney in that smashing slinky black dress! There was an
earlier version of the song, I think. Driven mad, she looks it up on the
Internet…
“The first public performance of the song
was by Bing Crosby, on his NBC radio show The
Kraft Music Hall on Christmas Day, 1941.” It’s by Irving Berlin. (“White
Christmas (song)”, Wikipedia).
Okay, well, possibly this is a terminus a quo, and the recipe is no
older than that. It does appear in The
Golden Wattle Cookery Book as “White Christmas”, complete with copha and
Rice Bubbles, but although the book was first published in 1926 it was reissued
umpteen times and we can’t be absolutely sure when the recipe first appeared.
In the Slice Proper
Once copha had
been used in sweets it was inevitable that it would transfer to the slice. These
days in slices the copha often seems to be combined with chocolate as a
“topping” or “icing” (the terms are applied interchangeably). I’ve collected 4
versions of an unbaked “Hazelnut Slice”
which combines copha and chocolate this way. Three of them, virtually identical
in all but wording, use a hazelnut chocolate bar, and the other is only
slightly different in that it uses plain chocolate plus roasted nuts. Why
combine chocolate with copha? The copha helps to harden the chocolate, you see.
What it does to the arteries I leave to your imagination.
More rarely the copha goes into the middle
of the slice. Here’s a recipe that sounds irresistible (if, like me, you can’t
resist peppermint!) I hasten to add it isn’t my Mum in the name.
Mum’s Peppermint Slice
Base: 1 cup coconut; 1 1/2 cups self-raising flour;
1/2 cup brown sugar; 185 g butter
Peppermint
Filling: 250 g icing sugar, sifted;
1 1/2 tablespoons milk; 1 teaspoon peppermint essence;
45 g Copha
Chocolate
Topping: 90 g Copha; 1/2 cup drinking chocolate;
1/4 teaspoon vanilla essence
Pre-heat oven to 200°C and grease a 28 x 20
cm tin.
Base: Melt butter and add to the mixed dry ingredients. Press
into prepared tin and bake in oven for 20 minutes or until lightly golden
brown.
Filling: Place icing sugar in a medium bowl, add milk and
peppermint essence.
Melt Copha over gentle heat and pour into
icing sugar. Mix well.
Spread over the hot biscuit base and allow to
cool completely before topping with chocolate.
Topping: Melt Copha over gentle heat. Remove from heat and stir
in drinking chocolate and vanilla.
Top cooled peppermint filling with a thin
layer of chocolate.
Allow to set and cut into squares.
(By “abrarose”, Bestrecipes.com.au, submitted
January 6, 2008)
Too much
copha? I'd say so. I think I'd skip the topping and just drizzle it with a
little melted chocolate. A very little.
Slice Origins: Bought Biscuits as an Ingredient
Bought
biscuits, apart from “water biscuits” (plain crackers) were sinful when I was
very little. The attitude was quite widespread amongst Mum’s contemporaries,
even though packaged biscuits were certainly on the market in New Zealand
during the later 1940s and the 1950s. If you worked it out very carefully it
was more economical to bake your own regularly, using flour, baking powder,
sugar and real butter, than to buy several packets per week. (At least as far
as the cost of the ingredients went—I’m not too sure about the electricity,
which by then was used for cooking in a large proportion of NZ homes.) And the
homemade biscuits were undeniably nicer, even though the bought ones used
butter, too. The cost factor was definitely important when we moved to
Auckland: the family expanded more than Dad’s wages did. But eventually things
improved and horrible bought Arrowroot biscuits and crunchier, nuttier ones
that I've forgotten the name of, made with wholemeal flour and butter, began to
appear in our kitchen cupboard. On the high shelf.
New! Crushed Biscuits!
I’ve already
mentioned Mum’s “Scradge” (see “Condensed Cholesterol & Sugar Blindness”, http://katywiddopsblog.blogspot.com.au/2016/03/the-australasian-slice-1.html
)
This early, elementary slice incorporated
crushed bought biscuits—a new and exciting notion!—cocoa, and butter. I don’t
think there was very much else in it at all. Maybe a bit of sugar. You smashed
the biscuits up, but not too much, there’d still be centimetre-long bits here
and there, mixed it all together, and squashed it ruthlessly into a shallow
pan. Then you iced it, using the least amount of icing sugar and cocoa possible
within the laws of physics. Then it had to sit in the fridge to solidify.
The biscuits were always milk arrowroot,
and as a result Scradge tasted strongly of milk arrowroot biscuits—slightly
sickly. But we didn’t care, it was much nicer than the bare biscuits. There was
a more expensive variation: it could have desiccated coconut in it as well, and
that version was definitely preferable.
Want to try Scradge? “Coconut Choc Slice”
by “emjay” at the BestRecipes website looks to me like the very thing—with the
optional coconut!
I haven’t found any earlier recipes for
using bought biscuits, though admittedly I haven’t scoured the literature, than
the one below, dating from the very early 1950s.
Bought Biscuits & Condensed Milk: Prequel to the
Slice
This beauty
from a very inventive cook makes use of two of the ingredients that were to
become standbys of the Australasian slice: sweet packet biscuits and sweetened
condensed milk. This innovator hasn’t yet got the idea of crushing and mushing
up, however: she sticks the whole biscuits together with her mixture, making a
sort of roll. –Rolls were very in at the time, but of course made from a
home-cooked sponge. This would probably have shocked her conservative peers to
the marrow:
Biscuit Freeze
1 packet coffee or similar biscuits, cup
condensed milk, 1/2 cup whipped cream, 2 tablespoons raspberry jam, 1
tablespoon lemon juice.
Blend together condensed milk, jam, and
juice. Fold in cream lightly. Open packet of biscuits and remove all but the
last one, keeping waxed lining intact. Place spoonful of mixture on the bottom
biscuit. Place another biscuit on this. Repeat these two layers till packet is
full, pressing each one firmly in place. Close firmly and freeze in freezing
compartment 12 hours. (Biscuits must be in firm waxed paper packet.) To serve,
slice crosswise. Good with ice cream or cold fruit dishes.
-E. EASTON (Iron Knob).
(Calendar
of Cakes. South Australian Country Women's Association, [1951?])
It’s for
January 3rd, far more suited to the South Australian climate than many in this
book! E. Easton was sensible as well as innovative.
Bought Biscuits Unbaked
These days
packaged biscuits have become a standard ingredient in the slice, almost every
unbaked recipe using some kind of commercial biscuit as its base (the bottom
layer). They can be laid edge-to-edge, but they are most often crushed. I’ve
got well over 70 examples in my database, but I’ll just give you two here.
“Liquorice Allsort Slice” exemplifies several
of the influences we’ve talked about in the history of the slice. As well as
using those two great standbys of the modern slice cook, crushed biscuits and
condensed milk, it also takes advantage of packaged sweets. You might say, who
on earth would want to use liquorice allsorts in baking, but I collected three
versions of this without even deliberately trying!
Liquorice Allsort Slice
1 packet Marie biscuits, crushed; 125 g butter;
1/2
x 395 g tin condensed milk;
1
cup liquorice allsorts, chopped;
1/4
cup melted cooking chocolate
Combine all ingredients together except the
melted chocolate.
Press into a slice tray.
Pour chocolate over the top. Refrigerate
until set.
Cut into approximately 24 squares.
(By “vetty”, BestRecipes.com.au, submitted
July 23, 2007)
Still Uncrushed…
“Lattice
biscuits” are apparently a favourite with those who favour the uncrushed bought
biscuit as their slice base. I’ve got 6 variations on this one. Most of the
“authors” seem to feel that by juggling the words in the name they’re entitled
to call it theirs. Never mind, that’s how recipes have always been spread! This
version’s pretty straightforward and typifies the uncrushed biscuit school:
Cream Cheese Lattice Slice
1-2 packs lattice biscuits (sugar coated);
125 g cream cheese; 125 g butter;
1/2 cup caster sugar;
1 teaspoon vanilla essence; 2 teaspoons lemon juice
2 teaspoons gelatine (dissolved in 1/4 cup
hot water, cooled)
Beat together cream cheese, butter and caster
sugar until well combined and creamy. Add remaining ingredients and beat well.
Place lattice biscuits in base of a slice
tin, sugar side down.
Spread cream cheese mixture evenly over
biscuits and top with more biscuits, sugar side up. Refrigerate until firm.
(By “Kayliz”, Bestrecipes.com.au)
Okay, I’ll
admit it, I’m not much of a biscuit buyer. I had no idea what “lattice
biscuits” might be, but I found a website which revealed all. Under the title
“Nan’s Vanilla Slice” it has a fuller version of this recipe, nicely
illustrated so that you can see how to lay the biscuits out. http://letslickthebowl.blogspot.com.au/2011/04/nans-vanilla-slice.html
Slice Origins: Muesli and OTHER Health Foods
The use of
muesli and other “health foods” in slices was a natural progression from the
adoption of rolled oats as a slice ingredient. (See “Condensed Cholesterol
& Sugar Blindness”,
The chief ingredient in muesli is rolled
oats. Muesli and the other “natural” ingredients making up the health food
pantheon—honey, yoghurt, raw nuts, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, pumpkin
seeds, etc.—entered onto the cookery scene well after rolled oats, but they all
share the semantic concept “healthy” in the popular consciousness. Although
oats are a very old food, the slice as such didn’t adopt them until well into
the second half of the twentieth century, by which time the concept of health
foods had reached the general public (it was already well known to vegetarians),
and muesli had appeared on the scene.
Muesli with Care
It was
darling Graham Kerr who introduced the not-breathlessly-waiting EnZed public to
muesli.
I just loved his first NZ TV show in the
1960s, “Cooking with Kerr” (his surname is pronounced “Care” – geddit?) Great
pity that after he went to America he felt he had to camp it up on screen.
Here’s his recipe for muesli from his Entertaining with Kerr (Rev.ed.,
Wellington, A.H. & A.W. Reed, 1966; first published 1963)
Müsli
4 large green apples (eating); 4 tablespoons rolled oats
4 tablespoons condensed milk OR 4 tablespoons
cream & 1 dessertspoon clear honey;
4 dessertspoons freshly-ground mixed nuts;
4 tablespoons sultanas; 2 lemons - juiced
1. Soak the oats and sultanas in plenty of
cold water overnight.
2. In the morning strain the water from the
oats and sultanas. grate the apples, skins, pips - the lot!
3. Add the apples to all the other
ingredients in whatever order you like, mix well and serve immediately.
Muesli originates from Switzerland,
invented, as Graham Kerr tells us, by a Dr Bircher-Benner. This was back around
1900, according to Wikipedia. During the decade that followed Graham’s book,
both muesli and the general idea of health foods began to seep into the
English-speaking consciousness. By 1980 in New Zealand we were eating not only
muesli, but wheatgerm, yoghurt, and wholegrain bread! Well, some of us.
Muesli and Friends
Muesli is
very healthy and so are honey and seeds. Here’s the modern slice that proves
it:
Healthy Honey Muesli Bars
3
cups Rice Bubbles; 1 cup toasted muesli;
1/2
cup coconut; 1/4 cup sesame seeds;
1/4 cup sunflower seed kernels; 1/3 cup peanut butter;
1/3 cup honey;
1/2 cup raw sugar; 125g butter
Grease a 19cm x 29cm lamington pan.
Toast sesame seeds on oven tray in moderate
oven for about 5 minutes, cool to room temperature.
Combine muesli, Rice Bubbles, coconut,
sunflower and sesame seeds in bowl.
Combine butter, honey, peanut butter and
sugar in saucepan, stir constantly over heat without boiling until butter is
melted and sugar is dissolved. Bring to the boil, reduce heat, simmer uncovered
without stirring for 5 minutes; stir into dry ingredients.
Press into prepared pan, refrigerate until
set before cutting.
(Cakes
& Slices Cookbook. Australian Women's Weekly, circa 1990)
It must surely
be the type specimen of the “health food” slice. Muesli, two sorts of seeds, honey, and raw
sugar. It only lacks the yoghurt, really.
Look closer. Oh, yes: it is the type specimen of the modern
health food slice! Three helpings of fat? (Butter, peanut butter, and coconut.) And all that sugary stuff?
(Honey is a sugar, never mind how “natural” it may be. I’m beginning to feel
like Pooh Bear: “But don’t bother about the bread, thanks.”)
Health Foods Sliced?
There are
innumerable recipes for slices which incorporate the so-called health foods,
but I haven’t been able to find one which might actually be healthy—i.e.
without immense amounts of fats and sugars.
So let’s just look at an interesting early
ancestor of the “healthy” slice which uses yoghurt, a health food unheard of in
the Antipodes until well into the 1970s, alongside the rolled oats which were
to become traditional, and then take a peek at what happened over the
succeeding decades as this very nice recipe was picked up, adopted, added to,
subtracted from, and just generally bowdlerised.
This is an English recipe from 1976, which
today in Australasia would definitely be called a “slice.” (Though it also
bears many of the hallmarks of the drastically misnamed “cheesecakes,” which
contain no cheese of any kind.) It’s got vital healthy ingredients: rolled
oats, brown sugar and, yes, yoghurt! It’s presented as a dessert rather than a
cake, but then, so are many of today’s slices.
Crunchy Layered Strawberry Tart
For the
base:
6 oz soft brown sugar; 6 oz butter; 8 oz
quick porridge oats
For the
middle:
1 carton soured cream; 2 cartons plain yoghurt;
2 oz castor sugar; grated rind 1 lemon (optional)
For the
top:
3/4 - 1 lb fresh strawberries (or
raspberries); 1/2 lb redcurrant jelly
In winter you could use a very good jam for
the topping instead.
Preheat oven to Gas 4 (350°F/180 C). Put
brown sugar and butter into saucepan and gently melt but do not let it boil.
Remove from heat and stir in oats. Grease a china or aluminium flan dish (about
9"-10" diameter). Put mixture into this and spread evenly. Bake in
top half of oven for 15-20 mins. Cool slightly.
Stir yoghurt, sour cream and lemon rind
together and pour on top of base. Put back in oven for 8 mins. Cool.
Slice strawberries in 1/2 and arrange on top
of soured cream and yoghurt which will have gone smooth and firm. Melt
redcurrant jelly gently and glaze the strawberries with it. Keep in a cool
place but not the fridge after glazing.
The first 2 layers can be made the day before
but do not put the fruit on sooner than 2 or 3 hrs before serving, Serve with
cream, and use a sharp knife to cut into the crisp base.
(Josceline Dimbleby. A Taste of Dreams. London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1976)
Early as it
is, this recipe has an essential feature of the slice which differentiates it
from a “tart” proper. The base mixture (which is not a stiff dough, like
pastry) is flat: spread evenly, not moulded up the sides of the flan dish.
(I can’t tell you what amount of yoghurt or
sour cream the English cartons hold. You might have to experiment to get the
2nd layer to set properly.)
Down With Health Foods!
The later versions
of Josceline Dimbleby’s lovely recipe do not improve upon it. Instead they
exemplify the modern trend towards ever sweeter and unhealthier slices. By
around 1990 the Australian Women's Weekly’s Cakes
& Slices Cookbook, in its “Strawberry Jelly
Slice,” is replacing the rolled oats of the base with crushed sweet
biscuits, adding chopped marshmallows, packet strawberry jelly and strawberry
essence to the fresh strawberries, and eliminating the yoghurt and sour cream,
replacing them with cream. The quintessential modern slice? You bet.
“Strawberry
Mallow Slice”, in the same book, offers a variation, with cream cheese,
cream, and coconut featuring alongside the fresh strawberries. This mixture is
picked up on the BestRecipes website in “Strawberry
Marshmallow Slice”, by “koahcook”, in 2010, and is described as: “Soft
and creamy topping and filling on a biscuit base. A CWA favourite for morning
or afternoon teas.”
Both of these use crushed sweet biscuits
instead of oats, too.
They sure haven’t
got healthier, have they?
