Grandma’s Vanilla Slice

When I was young we would always demand our poor mother make us our favourite dishes. These days I feel sorry for her, but back then I just assumed the thing she loved most in the world was making me happy and not having a moment to herself.

The good thing about this vanilla slice is we ALL loved it, so Mum could kill three birds with one stone then sit back, bury her toes deep into our shag-pile carpet, and enjoy a nice cuppa watching Bert Newton flickering across the black and white telly.

So, naturally, when I wanted to make this slice today, I headed down to Grandma’s to demand she whip it up, and Miss5 joined me.

This recipe took us an hour to make this morning, although there was a lot of chatting and laughing, which might have slowed us down a tad. It’s relatively easy with the main thing being you need to stand over the stove for about ten minutes and stir the custard mix until it’s ready. So go to the toilet before you start.

For the slice, you will need:

two sheets of puff pastry, thawed and at room temperature
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup cornflour
1/2 cup custard powder
4 cups milk
60g butter
2 egg yolks, beaten
2 teaspoons vanilla essence

For the icing, you will need:

1 cup icing sugar
1 teaspoon butter
1 passionfruit
1 teaspoon water

 note: you’ll want a baking dish or tin a shade smaller than the puff pastries.

Step One. Bake each square of puff pastry in a very hot oven for about five minutes, until they puff up and brown. Cut a thin, thin strip off the outside edges and flatten the pastry sheets.

Step Two. Line your baking dish with alfoil and place one of the puff pastry sheets into the bottom.

Step Three. Combine sugar, cornflour and custard powder in a saucepan, mixing well. Add milk a little at a time, mixing it in well before adding the next dash or splash. Add butter.

Step Four. Stir the custard mixture over heat until custard boils and thickens. Reduce heat and simmer for three minutes.

Step Five. Remove saucepan from heat and stir in vanilla and egg yolks.

Step Six. Pour mixture into baking dish and top with second flattened pastry sheet. Lick spoon.

Step Seven. Sift icing sugar into a bowl, add softened butter and pulp of passionfruit. You want your icing fairly thick, so only add enough water to make icing malleable.

Step Eight. Spread icing evenly over top pastry in dish. When whole thing is cool, refrigerate for several hours so the slice can set. Or lock yourself in a bedroom and be prepared to lick your fingers.