Caramel, Macadamia & Coconut Slice

You can see the burntish bits!

I made this very-bad-for-you slice for morning tea at work this week. It’s from the April 2013 issue of Super Food Ideas.

Speaking of magazines, Australian Good Taste, the Woolworths-affiliated food magazine, is ceasing publication shortly – they announced this on Facebook but with no actual reason, so I’m not sure if it’s a financial-based decision or what. It is a great magazine, that I have been buying each month for about 10 years – but I don’t think it’s the “best” – too many of what I call “human interest” stories. I just like my food magazines to have lots of recipes, and I don’t mind advertising at all, as long as the ads also feature a recipe using their product. Gadget reviews are okay by me too, but I can’t stand “meal planners”, letters to the editor, stories about farmers growing their produce, and monthly shopping lists etc. No one ever makes every single meal or recipe in a month, from one magazine – apart from not liking them all (or their kids not eating them all), if they’re that stumped for ideas of what to cook and need it spelled out for every day of the month, they are probably not the type who would buy a food mag in the first place. Just my 2 cents worth anyway…..

So, back to the slice…..once I’ve got it in my head to make a specific recipe NOW, I do not like to be thwarted – but I could not find caramel bits, nor are Scalliwag biscuits anywhere to be seen around here. For those of you not in the know, Scalliwags are the politically correct version of what we all grew up with as Golliwog biscuits! Despite the name change, they are not easy to find, not here in Perth anyway. They are fairly plain biscuits, a bit like Teddy Bears, so I figured I could use any plain biscuit and settled on Malt-o-Milk. For the caramel bits I used choc bits.

The slice was very easy to make, but I overcooked it a tad as my overly-hot oven has a mind of its own sometimes, and the edges came out quite browned. When I took the slice out of the fridge the next morning, to cut up, it was SO heavy – felt like a brick! I thought, uh-oh, this is going to be as hard a rock and break people’s teeth! I even cut off the harder brown edge bits and threw them away, worrying about it. In fact it was great and received lots of praise (although I think my fellow co-workers will eat anything sweet and are quite often just being polite, to make sure I keep making stuff haha).

Caramel, Macadamia & Coconut Slice

250 gm pkt chocolate Scalliwag biscuits (OR whatever plain sweet biscuits you like)

125 gms butter, melted

395 gm can sweetened condensed milk

2 cups desiccated coconut

100 gms macadamia halves

250 gm pkt caramel bits (OR use choc bits)

Line a 20cm x 30cm lamington/slice pan.

In a food processor, process biscuits until they are fine crumbs. Add melted butter and mix well. Press mixture into base of pan. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 160C (140C fan forced).

Combine condensed milk, coconut, macadamias and caramel bits in a large bowl. Spoon over prepared base and spread evenly with the back of a spoon, pressing down to level slightly.

Bake for 30-35 minutes or until top is golden and just firm. Cool in pan. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours or until set.

Cut into squares to serve.

Makes 24 pieces.

Happy Fooding!

Foodie Mags

I’ve never shared my love of food magazines, with you. There are SO many on the market these days, both local and imported. When I lived overseas I devoured whatever food mags I could find, including ones in Chile, as the food there was great and it was good for my Spanish practice! And when I’ve been to the US or UK, I hungrily drool along the magazine racks to see what food-related print-media I can find. It’s not just the recipes themselves that I love, but the related travel/food articles, restaurant reviews, celeb chef interviews, and of course the kitchen gadget reviews (cos’ you can never have too many kitchen tools/gadgets/bits!).

Plus, the photos of the food are so mouthwateringly amazing! I even like the ads, cos’ they often have recipes too. It’s a bit tragic I suppose, but just part of being a committed foodie.

 I love them all, but I only have 4 that I actually BUY on a regular basis. These are all monthly Australian ones, two of which (BBC Australian Good Food and Recipes+) I subscribe to, and two of which (Australian Good Taste and Super Food Ideas) I buy in the supermarket each month. I don’t subscribe to the latter two, partly becase there is no financial incentive to do so (ie no savings off the news stand price) and partly because there’s something fun about haunting the shops at a certain time each month and getting that ooooooooh of excitement when there’s a new issue out!

I am not into keeping the magazines, because I have too much clutter in my life already, and I know if I put them aside I’ll never remember what recipe was in which – I just read through them (usually they’re my with-a-cuppa-in-bed breakfast reading on the weekends) and rip/cut out the recipes I want, which I then file in manilla folders labelled for each recipe category. I browse through these folders when I need inspiration, and if I try something and like it, it then gets transferred into my recipe software programme, The Recipe Manager (love this software!). I give away the magazines once I’ve finished with them, so that all those recipes that I myself don’t want, aren’t going to waste.

I also read Delicious, Cuisine, and occasionally Gourmet Traveller and Donna Hay, but I borrow these from the library I work at. I don’t find enough recipes in these ones that take my fancy, to warrant buying them.

Happy Fooding (or should I say Happy Reading)!