Apricot or Raspberry Slice

I promised a sweet treat today so here is a family favourite.

My Aunty Aggie always made an apricot version whenever we visited. If she didn't have any on hand, she would get out her cooking bowl and bake it while we waited. That's how easy it is.

Aunty Ces made a raspberry version and it's her version I have included below because that's the one in my black box.

The original recipe gives ingredients in pounds and ounces, as do most recipes from the 1960s or earlier, before metric measures became the norm.

I have converted the weights to metrics and included the originals in brackets.

Often the original amounts use even multiples of ingredients (eg 2oz butter, 4 oz sugar, 1 egg etc) making them easier to learn off by heart, so I usually use scales switched to ounces and pounds for my old favourites. If you do this, remember that old-fashioned cooks used measuring cups that were slightly smaller than the metric ones used today so don't overfill the cups, err on the lighter side. (I haven't mastered the way to present fractions in this program so a-cup-and-a-half is given as 1 1/2 cups etc).

Most of the cooks I knew in my childhood measured ingredients using an old kitchen cup (one from the everyday crockery set that was chipped or cracked), along with milk bottles and basic cutlery that had seen better days. A tablespoon was exactly that, the big spoon from the cutlery set used for dishing up, a dessert spoon was the sort used for sweets, but the size was more consistent (and usually bigger) than the more stylish ones used today.

The kitchens of my childhood didn't stretch to special measuring cups, spoons and jugs. Which brings me to my overriding cooking philosophies:

• recipes are for tweaking;
• near enough is usually good enough;
• cooking should be fun not stressful;
• if a recipe doesn't work kids will still eat the results and there's always next time; and
• a good cook cleans up afterwards, or better still on the go (that one comes courtesy of my mother).

Cooking is really just chemistry in action. Lots of things can change the result - room temperature, humidity, the size of an egg, the diet of the chicken, the type of grass the cows ate before they were milked, and lots more.

So don't get hung up on measuring ingredients to the last grain. Just get out a bowl (or a few), scales, the odd bit of cutlery and your favourite pots, pans or tins and enjoy a bit of culinary therapy. Your friends and family will love you for it and you will probably cut your carbon footprint as well.

What could be better than that?

Aunty Ces's slice, that's what.

So here it is:

Apricot/Raspberry Slice

Ingredients:

Base

55g (2 oz) butter

110g (4 oz) castor sugar
170g (6 oz) self raising flour
1 egg.
Method:
Cream butter and sugar. Add egg and beat until mixture becomes pale and smooth.
Mix in flour (sift it if you like but I usually don't bother unless it is lumpy).
Grease a slice tin with butter or line it with baking paper.
My slice tin is about 28cm x 18cm (11inches x 7 inches).
Push base mixture into tin with floured hands, gradually spreading it until it covers the bottom of the tin fairly evenly.
Cover with raspberry or apricot jam, enough to thinly cover the base mixture.
Topping
1 1/2 cups coconut
1/2 cup sugar (ordinary sugar if you have it, not castor sugar)
1 egg
Method:
Mix coconut, sugar and egg together and spread lightly over the jam. There's no need to squash it down. The oven will bind it together.
Bake in a moderate oven (about 180C or 160C if fan-forced oven) until golden (about 20-25 minutes).
When cold, cut into squares and keep in an airtight container.
This slice is great with coffee or tea, as an after-school treat, or with custard and/or icecream as an easy dessert.