I made a lemon slice and took it into work today. If you like lemon slice too, and wish to make your own, here is the laziest recipe IN THE WORLD. There is absolutely no baking involved and you only spend about three minutes with your saucepan and ten minutes mixing stuff total.
For the slice, you’ll need:
- one 250g pack of plain bickies — Marie, Milk Arrowroot, or Granita would be lovely here — basically whatever you can find in your biscuit aisle that’s sweet and crumbles well.
- about 100g butter
- 1 cup condensed milk
- a fairly average handful of lemon zest (you can use bottled lemon juice if your local lemon tree looks a bit iffy)
- 2 cups shredded coconut
For the topping:
- about 40g butter
- 2 cups icing sugar
- 3 tablespoons of lemon juice
- a bit more of that excellent coconut
Grease and line a baking tin. (Don’t freak! We won’t be baking! I promised.) Leave enough paper sticking out the top so that you can pull the slice out easily!
Take your biscuits and mash them into relatively chunky crumbs. Do this with your food processor by pulsing a few times. Or do what I do and bash them with a rolling pin in a bag, which is excellent fun and terrifies neighbours and pets alike. You don’t want this to be too powdery.
Chop the butter into little squares. Heat the condensed milk and butter on a very low heat in a pan, stirring all the time, till the butter is melted and the condensed milk is relatively warm but not bubbly. This will burn like a motherfucker if you let it get too warm or allow it to settle, so beware. I guess you could use a microwave as well.
Use a wooden spoon to mix most of your crumbs, all your zest, and most of your milky stuff together in a bowl (we’re reserving some of the crumbs and milk in case our mixture needs more dry or wet). Give it a good mix and assess the crumbliness! It should be roughly the consistency of Anzac biscuit mix at this point. Add more biscuit or milk if it needs it. Taste a little to see if it is lemony enough! Then spoon it into the pan and pat it down in a nice, flat layer.
Put this in the fridge to chill, and then go do something else. I whiled away the time shooting dodgy mercenaries in Mass Effect 2, pew pew pew.
After about 60-90 minutes of chilling, it’s time to make the icing. Mix the butter, icing sugar and lemon juice together. Don’t melt the butter, just mix it in. Spread it on your chilled slice in a nice even layer, using your trusty spatula. Sprinkle a little more coconut on top. Chill for a couple more hours to set the icing.
To remove it from the pan, pull it up by the paper like I told you and slap it on a plate. Cut that bugger up and eat!
If you are going to take it into work on a 35º day like I did, it would be prudent to put an ice pack in with it to keep it reasonably firm.
I am willing to guess that this is really good with limes, but I’ve never tried. You can also use candied lemon slices in a layer between the slice and icing, or on top, for EPIC TANG.
