Vegie Smugglers

The winter break can be a bit uninspiring, can't it!

School holiday time again – don’t they come around quickly! This is the dreary one isn’t it? Cold, miserable! Everyone snotty. Still, we’re soldiering on and enjoying the lack of deadlines.

So far we’re filling in the days at the park, a spot of origami and of course, cooking treats.

Oh the possibilities!!!!

Last holidays I was obsessed with my psychedelic marble cake but these holidays I’m focused on SLICE! They were SUCH a staple of my childhood, but I’ve only started making them recently. They’re lumped into the category of “recipes I’ve started cooking since I became a parent”, along with cheese sauce and schnitzels. Could also have something to do with the dodgy state of my oven and its inability to cook a cake evenly.

Most of us who take our Australian-ness seriously will have one of the Woman’s Weekly slice cookbooks. Below is the recipe I whipped up this morning, a favourite from my own childhood, now passed onto my own little lovelies.

Chocolate, butter... it must be school holidays!

Chocolate Fruit Slice (From the Woman’s Weekly “Cakes & Slices” Cookbook)

125g butter
1 cup SR flour
2 tbsp cocoa
½ cup castor sugar
1 cup coconut
½ cup mixed fruit (today I used sultanas & craisins)
¼ cup chopped pecan nuts
CHOCOLATE ICING
1 ½ cups icing sugar
¼ cup cocoa
2 tsps melted butter
2 tbsp milk

Preheat the oven to 175C. Grease & line a 19cmx29cm lamington pan.

Melt butter. Add in the sifted flour & cocoa, sugar, coconut, fruit & pecans. Press into the tin and bake for 20 mins.

Sift the icing sugar and cocoa into a bowl, stir in the melted butter and milk and mix to a stiff paste.

Spread over the cooked base (while it’s still warm). Leave it all to cool in the tin. Cut into squares.

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While you wait for these to cool and set, check out some of my previous school holiday ideas.