This week, Roy decided to make something the kids had been requesting for some time. They had been asking for that 'old slice which is made with leftover biscuits', also known as 'Hedgehog'. There were two problems though. The first, easily solved one is that Roy never has leftover biscuits in the house! A quick trip to the shops solved that, but now we were left with the more difficult problem. Neither Roy's Grandma, nor myself have made hedgehog for years, and the recipe was never written down. So, after a little trial and error, we recreated the original, and now Roy would like to share it with you. So this week, Roy Creates Old Fahioned Hedgehog Slice.
You Will Need:
Note: vary the proportions depending on how many biscuits you have leftover. You can also add nuts, other dried fruit, omit the coconut - whatever you like!
- 250 grams of plain, sweet biscuits. We didn't have any spare, so we used a whole packet of Marie biscuits, but you can use whatever you have leftover. Roy's Grandma even used to occasionally use cream biscuits!
- 1 cup of sultanas
- 1/2 a cup of dessicated coconut
- A generous tablespoon of cocoa
- 125 grams of sugar
- 125 grams of butter
- 1 teaspoon of instant coffee dissolved in 1 tablespoon of hot water (or 1 teaspoon of coffee essence)
- 1 beaten egg
- Chocolate icing and coconut to ice. You can find Roy's recipe for Chocolate icing here. You can use hundreds and thousands instead of coconut if you like too - that's how Roy's Great Grandma used to finish the slice!
Method:
- Put the biscuits into a strong plastic bag (preferably ziplock) and take to them with a rolling pin. You want to bash them up until they are in crumbs. If you want you can do this in the food processor too.
- Put the biscuit crumbs into a bowl and mix in the coconut, sultanas and cocoa.
- In a saucepan, combine the sugar, butter and dissolved coffee. Stir until everything has melted together. You don't want the mix to boil, so when everything is melted and combined, remove from the heat.
- Lightly beat your egg in a small bowl. Keep beating the egg and ask a friend to drizzle a tablespoon of the hot butter and sugar in. If you beat all the time this is happening you won't scramble the eggs. It will also raise the temperature of the eggs and you will be able to add the eggs slowly (mixing all the time) to the hot butter and sugar without any problems.Otherwise, you can cool the butter mixture to room temperature - Roy is too impatient!
- Add the butter, sugar, coffee and egg mix to the dry ingredients and mix until everything is wet.
- Press the mix into a lined slice tin and put in the refridgerator to set.
- When the slice is set, ice with chocolate icing and sprinkle with coconut.
- When the icing is set, slice and enjoy.
- If the weather is warm, you will need to store the slice in the refridgerator.