Sunday, April 9, 2017

Super Simple Sydney Special


I've got the book group coming here tomorrow night, so today I made an old-fashioned slice, Sydney Special. I have no idea where the name comes from. I got the recipe close to fifty years ago from Chris Else's sister Bridget - she and my sister, Susan, were the bridesmaids at our wedding. It used to be a great stand-by for hungry children. I haven't made it for years, partly because I don't usually have any cornflakes, but there was a small bag of them in the pantry so I thought I'd give it a go. It's so easy, it would be a good thing for kids to make themselves.

Sydney Special
(Bridget Else, now Gill)

1 cup cornflakes
1 cup dessicated coconut
1 cup plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 dessertspoons cocoa
3/4 cup brown sugar
150g melted butter
Your favourite icing - chocolate is good (as long as it's made with real chocolate), but peppermint or coffee would work well too.

Set oven to 180C/170C fan bake.
Mix all dry ingredients together. Add melted butter and mix well.
Press into a sponge roll tin/shallow baking tin lined with baking paper.
Bake for 25-30 minutes.
Near the end of the baking, mix icing - for chocolate, melt squares of Whittaker's Dark Ghana in the microwave  and mix it with enough icing sugar, and a little milk, to give a thick but fluid consistency, ready for spreading.
Take out slice, cool a little and cut into squares or little bars.
Spread some icing on each square and leave to cool and harden before putting away. (This is less messy than icing the whole block before you cut it up, and marginally healthier, as it uses about a third less icing.)

So there you are. I actually made double the quantity so I'd have enough for me, Jonathan and our neighbour Frances, as well as for the book group. I think I slightly over-baked it - it was a bit crunchier than I remembered - but yummy all the same. Why are there three missing in the photo? Because we had to test them, of  course, and Jonathan needed two to be sure they were okay.




2 comments:

Unknown said...

Oh i have the exact same recipe except for the cereal. Mine is called weetbix slice.... Delicious.

Madeleine Lane said...

Thanks Ann for the GREAT recipe!