Coffee Walnut Slice

Lucky that I did lots of baking last week, so I have still got things to blog about this week, as I haven’t been doing any baking since I got sick on Saturday!! Yesterday I posted about how I made Belgium Biscuits for my father. Well, my mother’s special request was for coffee slice. She explained how her new favourite thing is coffee slice with a wine biscuit base (wine biscuits are the NZ version of what I imagine Graham crackers are like) and creamy icing and walnuts on top. It doesn’t really sound like my kind of thing (I don’t like coffee and am not a huge fan of biscuit based cakes), but like a good daughter, I did my best to re-create Mum’s new favourite.

When I make chocolate fudge slice, I use Mum’s recipe which is simply melted butter, condensed milk, cocoa and crushed biscuits. I had thought of doing this but leaving out the cocoa and adding coffee. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that the condensed milk might be a bit sweet. So I flicked through some books until I found an Annabel Langbein recipe for chocolate slice which had an egg and sugar in the base instead of condensed milk. I adapted this base for my coffee slice by leaving out the cocoa and adding instant coffee dissolved in hot water. I iced the slice with a simple icing of melted butter, icing sugar and coffee dissolved in hot water and topped it with fresh walnuts.

The walnuts are delicious. I bought them in their shells from the Takapuna market and they taste nothing like walnuts you buy at the supermarket. If you don’t like walnuts, it may be because you have never tried fresh – they are like eating something completely different!

Coffee Walnut Slice

1 egg, lightly beaten
120g butter
1/3 c castor sugar
1 tbsp instant coffee dissolved in hot water
250g plain biscuits, crushed (I used girl guide biscuits)

· Heat butter, sugar, egg and coffee together until smooth
· Add crushed biscuits (I crushed mine with a rolling pin so that there were still chunks of biscuit)
· Press into 20x18cm lined tin and chill
Ice with coffee icing and scatter with chopped walnuts