Vanilla slice

Yesterday was Australia Day and our family has some traditions of sorts when it comes to our meal. Game Fanatic has ruled we must have potato salad done the way I make plus cornbread…Not that either of those is particularly or at all Australian. I make the corn bread with onions and chilli flakes (or the cut fruit when we have it) and it comes out quite well. For Lego Lover, we usually buy lamingtons since they tend to be a bit fiddly to make. I bought a couple on Friday but he insisted we all had to eat one so I bought more yesterday. The Scientist happens to love vanilla slices and as that is particularly Australian I decided I’ve have a go of making that this year.

I searched online for a recipe that seemed easy enough for me to follow and found one on the Taste.com.au website that seemed suitable. I bought the ingredients on Friday and started cooking that night. The custard was an interesting experience to make. You start off heating milk and heavy cream together then adding it to a beaten mixture of egg yolks, sugar and vanilla. Then you have to cook the mixture a bit longer until it thickens and coats a wooden spoon. When I started reheating it just turned into rather gluggy lumps and didn’t exactly coat the spoon so much as attach itself to it. But after a couple minutes it did thicken into a smooth mixture and was fine. After that it has to cool for an hour. Meanwhile you prepare two sheets of puff pastry in the oven before cooling it and then pressing it down flat. The Scientist took care of this part while I was doing the custard. One piece of puff pastry is placed into a pan and the cooled custard is spread over it before topping it with the other sheet. It didn’t look that thick when the custard was spread across it so we thought it was going to be more like a vanilla slice sandwich. I made some icing yesterday, complete with food coloring to make the requisite pink color the Scientist remembered from his youth. The Scientist spread the icing and it chilled again until after we had dinner. It was surprisingly good but quite rich when we tried it last night. The custard was a bit squishy compared to what you get at a bakery but it tasted really nice. And the thickness wasn’t that bed in the end although it wasn’t as thick as we are used to eating. As it is so rich it will take a few days to finish this off since it’s mainly the Scientist and me that are eating it. Next time we try it, we plan to make a lower fat version and see if it tastes as good.