Vanilla Slice & Vanilla Slush

Sunday, 9 July 2017

Over the last few years I have conducted extensive research into the attributes of the perfect vanilla slice.   I have decided that for my taste at least, The Tasmanian bakery chain - Banjos,  make the best option when considering price, filling, overall texture, size & quality of icing.  This is what their version looks like (but usually they are a bit bigger) - the photo is taken from their website:

Having settled on this as my role model, the next step for a food scientist such as myself is to attempt to recreate it at home, so after further research I   settled on a recipe from Donna Hay.  I think my first attempt turned out pretty well..

The only thing I wasn't too happy about was the pastry, it seemed to go soggy very quickly.    

My second attempt a few weeks later turned out very similar to the first, possibly with a yummier filling,  but once again the pastry was a bit soggy. Seeking improvement I started researching other vanilla slice recipes and they seemed to use a different method for cooking the pastry to Donna's recipe.

Armed with this new technique, I was pretty sure that my third attempt was finally going to produce the perfect slice...

not so much..

I mean.. not if you like your filling to set anyway..

We've called this the Vanilla Slush, and everyone was so busy trying to keep their portion from dripping over the side of their plates that they weren't able to compliment me on the miniscule improvement in the crispness of the pastry. Hmmph.  I'm sure you're wondering what could have gone so wrong, well my first thought is that it was because I forgot to add the sugar until after the filling had thickened,    I mixed it in afterwards and wondered if that maybe broke down whatever had started to bind it all together. But then I read the comments on the Donna Hay site and discovered that swapping the prescribed thin cream for thickened cream would cause it not to set, due to the added gelatine.  I had in fact used thickened cream for my third attempt as we didn't have any thin cream - who would have thought the results would be so drastically bad! 

So clearly there needs to be a forth attempt.