Squares and Slices
A very speedy kind of baking made in shallow rectangular tins and then cut up before serving. They can be anything from a crisp and crunchy biscuit to a luscious, caramel-filled chocolate shortcake. Use them to adorn a tea table or to fill the tins for a week of enjoyable snacking.
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Skite Cake
When I was at school a ‘skite’ was a show-off and it was deeply embarrassing to be accused of skiting. And yet despite its name, Skite Cake, which I found in a 1950s recipe book from the Awamangu-Pukeawa Association of Presbyterian Women, seems to hide its light under a bushel. It has a chocolate shortcake base with a chocolate caramel filling and chocolate icing, but the caramel filling is not ...
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Caramel Nougat Slice
These have no relation to the white nougat you can buy, although they are almost as delicious and a great deal easier to make. Nougat Slices and Nougatine Bars appear in many early cookery books and the name usually indicates the presence of nuts and brown sugar in the mix. (In French baking nougatine means a mixture of caramelised sugar and almonds.) I found Caramel Slice and Nougat Bars side ...
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Crunchy Apple Slice
I wanted a recipe for an apple slice with a crisp base and couldn’t find what I was after in any of my books. Most of the recipes were for apple shortcakes which are generally quite soft and spongy. So I experimented with combining a spicy apple pie topping with a firm biscuit base and putting stewed or grated apple in the middle. After several attempts I think this one ...
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Chocolate Caramel Fingers
Two layers of chocolate shortcake enclose a generous band of creamy caramel, all baked together then iced and cut into small fingers. The topping is usually chocolate icing or, more extravagantly, melted dark chocolate and the caramel relies on an old favourite ingredient: sweetened condensed milk. This recipe comes from a Tokoroa community cook book which had already lost its cover and the first six pages by the time a ...
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Lemon Bars
Very pale and pretty, yet delivering a penetrating citrusy tang, these combine the unctuous appeal of lemon honey with a crisply tender biscuit base. I’ve given two methods for making them. The first version is simpler to do but the second version gives a more definite textural contrast between base and topping. Both are delicious. Several of the older cookery books have little lemon tartlets – shortcrust pastry cases filled ...