Slice Making

For as long as I can remember, my grandmother has always kept a range of slices cut up in the freezer, ready to pull out at a moments notice when guests arrive or for taking to "bring a plate" type functions.

Her lemon slice is a favourite amongst all her family members and she's quite well known for it amongst friends as well. It always seems to be the first to disappear on a plate of mixed slice. :-)

I've never been a slice maker myself. Not 100% sure why. I bake cakes and muffins and biscuits, but rarely slice. I think I've always considered them a little more on the complicated side (one of the reasons I *really* like baking muffins is that I don't have to ice them LOL). And often they have fruit and/or nuts in them which makes them that little bit more expensive and my children won't eat dried fruit (and aren't allowed to eat nuts until they're 7).

I was planning to make a couple of slice recipes up today. We need to take a plate of dessert for our family service at church tomorrow and I needed to find something I could make with ingredients in the cupboard. I knew I'd spotted a chocolate weetbix slice on a thread on the Simple Savings forum and thought I'd try that. We were also given some lemons last week and free lemons always makes me think of making Grandma's Lemon Slice.

For some reason the urge to bake hit me at about 5pm last night. That would have worked out okay except for the fact that I couldn't get the lid off my new food processor and had to wait until DH got home to pull it off for me. Not to be perturbed I went ahead and started my baking while DH finished tea off. Talk about a circus in the kitchen. Kids everywhere (some days I'm SURE we have more than 3 LOL) and benchtops covered in cut up salad (I'd already started preparing the hamburgers for tea before DH got home), an electric frypan, food processor and numerous baking ingredients. I got the lemon slice made and in the fridge before tea, then made the chocolate slice between main course and dessert (while the kids were still eating). That cooked while we had dessert and then after tea I iced both slices. Absolute madness!!!! My excuse was that I could reuse most of the dishes for both slices and cut down on the number of dishes piling up with the tea dishes. In reality, when I get an idea in my head - I find it hard to change course. Full bore ahead! LOL.

I have just sampled both slices and they are waaaayyyyy too more-ish. Maybe that's the reason I don't regularly make slices? :-) Here are the recipes if you want to try this at home:

GRANDMA'S LEMON SLICE

1/2 tin condensed milk
4 oz margarine or butter
1/2 pound crushed biscuits
1 cup coconut
rind of 1 lemon
juice of half a lemon (use the other half in the icing)

Melt condensed milk and butter together. Crush biscuits and mix with coconut and lemon rind. Mix together all ingredients including juice of 1/2 lemon. Spread in a slice tray and refrigerate until set.

Make up lemon icing using juice of other half lemon and ice when set. Sprinkle top with extra coconut.

If you'd like to make this recipe even cheaper or you find you don't have any condensed milk on hand - you can make your own! Here is the recipe (thanks to Hillbilly Housewife):

SWEETENED CONDENSED MILK

1 cup dry milk powder
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup boiling water
3 Tbsp margarine

Milk until smooth. Makes the equivalent of 1 can of condensed milk. Remember the above recipe only uses half - I just halved the ingredients as I made this so I had the right quantity for my lemon slice. Alternatively you can make a double batch of the lemon slice but I didn't have 2 packets of biscuits to do that with.

EASY CHOCOLATE SLICE
3 crushed weetbix
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup SR flour
1 cup coconut
4 tsp cocoa
4 oz butter

Melt butter and add to other ingredients. Press into tin. Cook in moderate overn for 15 minutes. Ice while warm with chocolate icing.

This is GREAT if you get a craving for chocolate and don't have any on hand. Mind you, as I was typing the recipe I realised that I read the cocoa as Tbsp not tsp so mine is probably a little more chocolatey than the actual recipe. LOL. Lucky you can never have too much chocolate eh?

And don't do what I did and try to ice it straight out of the oven. It's very soft when it first comes out of the oven. Let it cool a little like you would biscuits before trying to ice the top.