Do you ever have projects that you put off forever, and then when you finally get around to them, they disappoint you somehow? This liquorice allsort slice was one of those projects for me. I spied the recipe in The Country Show Cookbook, but cannot remember the number of packets of liquorice allsorts I purchased in anticpation of making this slice, then ate them without doing so.
Last night, I finally made the slice, but alas - all did not go to plan. First, my liquorice allsorts were not all the coloured square kind - there were also bits of licorice twist and the licorice balls with hundreds and thousands attached. No matter, I thought, I will use all of it. Next, I realised that what I thought was a baked slice was in fact a refrigerator slice. My next nasty surpise was that I needed a lot of crushed biscuits to make it, so I had to scrounge around my cupboard for what I had (in the end, a combination of shortbread and gingernuts). My next discovery was that I was supposed to add copha (vegetable shortening) to the chocolate topping - I didn't have any of that either. No matter, I thought, I will leave it out and use straight chocolate. Finally, as I was making the recipe, I realised that an entire step had been left out of the recipe in the book - sure, I could guess what it was, but it would have been nice for it to be printed.
The end result reflected the shemozzle that the whole exercise had been - my slice didn't seem to set firmly, and I am not sure what it was. Didn't I use enough biscuits? Or were the butter shortbreads not quite right for a recipe that originally called for the very sturdy Marie biscuits? I tasted a piece of the gooey confection, and immediately fell in love. From that moment on, I knew I couldn't throw it out, but I couldn't take it to work in its present condition.
My light bulb moment was this - I flipped the slice over, so that the sturdy chocolate topping formed the base, and the sticky base formed the top of the slice. I then liberally sprinkled the slice with coconut so that although sticky, it could be picked up without getting covered in goo. Problem solved!
I found a very similar recipe online here at Taste.com, but I notice it uses about half the condensed milk. Methinks that the recipe I used is flawed in the amount of condensed milk cited, as there is not enough dry ingredients to hold it together.
If you are a liquorice lover, I say go ahead and make this slice, but use the Taste.com recipe so that you don't have to do the same patch job that I did.
