Vanilla Slices
Who remembers eating these as a child? Such a treat in the 50s and 60s [I am 70!], as I recall. Very simple to make and you can easily use clotted cream for the filling, or whipped double cream. You can use whatever jam you fancy, but I used Strawberry, as that is what I remember from my childhood.
Rough Puff Pastry. Pre heat your fan oven to about 200C. Lightly butter a baking sheet. Cut a piece of card to use as a template for the pastry. 2” x 3½ “
The same recipe as I use for so much, pasties, pies etc. Half fat to flour. The fat - half butter and half lard. Rubbed in not too finely ie with biggish lumps still showing. Bind with very cold water, just enough to bring it all together. Then a few light kneads, chill for half and hour and you are ready to roll. For sweet recipes like these delicious slices, I also add some icing sugar. You could also add a drop or two of vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste.
Roll our your pasty, not too thinly, into rectangles - about 2” x 3½”. You do need them all to be of the same size! Place your pastry rectangles on a baking sheet, brush with a little beaten egg and bake in a hot oven for about 20 mins. Don’t let them get too brown, you may need to turn the oven down for the last 5 mins. Cool on a wire rack.
Cover half of the pieces with your chosen jam. Whip the cream, add one drop of vanilla extract if you wish and cover the jam.
Make a glacé Icing with a little water and a drop of vanilla extract, mixed quite stiffly. Cover the pastry tops and then Enjoy!!!
Note: I also recall Mock Cream. I did try to re create that, to use, instead of fresh cream, but was not impressed with the results. Does anyone have a good foolproof recipe?
I most definitely remember eating these. They were my special treat in the very early 1960s at the weekend if I'd been good at school all week. I really don't remember them being quite so full of wholesome ingredients as yours. The jam wasn't very jammy - it was a lurid red, jelly-like imitation of jam and heaven only knows what that "cream" was made of. I've read a suggestion somewhere that it was creme pat but it most definitely wasn't like any creme pat I've ever made or eaten since. (If you buy a mille-feuille in France then you'll get creme pat and, although they're lovely, they're not what we had in the 1960s). If I remember correctly the icing was usually sprinkled with some hundreds and thousands too. If you ate too many of slices back then I think you probably glowed in the dark.
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