Eight years

Oxford, Oxford, Boston, Boston, Boston, Canberra, Kansas City, Oudtshoorn, Canberra again....Wishing a very happy birthday to one of the best-travelled eight-year-olds on the planet (and always good company, no matter where we are): the mighty Miss B. May the year to come bring you lots of Australian (and aquatic!) adventures.

TUK slices

In the US, we call them “bar cookies”; in the UK, they are “tray bakes”. Here in Australia, anything you can mix up, spread in your standard square or rectangular pan, and stick in the oven for 30-40 minutes is known as “slice”. (As in, “That looks yummy, I’ll have a slice!”) And at the moment, it’s my default baking option, because pretty much the only baking implement I have in the TUK is a 9” x 13” (23 cm x 33 cm?) metal pan that I bought myself, rationalizing it as follows:

1. You can never have too many baking/roasting pans.
   
2. If I go more than two weeks without baking, bad things will happen.

It has turned out to be very useful, both in expanding my TUK possibilities and in preserving my mental serenity during transition. It gets used on a near-daily basis for savory as well as sweet cooking, and it has prompted me to expand my definition of what in my standard baking repertoire can be re-cast as a ‘slice’. I’ve already used it for congo bars, yogurt cake, and flapjack, along with the fridge cake I posted the other day. Now I’m trawling my own archives to see what else I can repurpose. I’m thinking these would all be good options:

 

- bacon blue cheese bread

- blackberry-applesauce cake

- chocolate-chocolate cake

- lemon poppyseed cake

- oat-fruit bars (ok, technically these are already a slice, I just haven’t made them in a long time)

What else? Recommendations? The only stipulation is that it must be able to be sliced neatly and eaten out of hand - suitable for coffee mornings, knitting groups, and playdates.

Wordless Wednesday

Cheering up the flat with some local colo(u)r - Canberra Farmers' Market proteas, July 2012