Vegan MoFo –
Week 4: 21st-27th November 2016 Memories & Traditions
21st: Favourite memory – What’s your favourite ever food memory? Recreate it.
Moving is so boring and time-consuming, but I’ve managed to keep up with MoFo (I think..?) over at my Instagram… with some yummy bakery items and quick meals.
Recently I grabbed a can of sweetened condensed coconut milk from the Asian grocery store. One of my friends has been telling me to make crushed iced dessert to pour it over, à la the $1 bowls I’ve had in night markets in south-east Asia, that often also things like contain fruit, corn, and red beans… which is a great idea! But I thought I’d go with a less great idea…
One of my favourite treats when I was wee lass was Lemon Coconut Slice. It’s pretty daggy, all sugar, crushed biscuits, and sweet milky gunge, a bit 80s… so a fancy hipster retro slice, I guess! (And it only used half a can of sweetened condensed coconut milk so I can still do the crushed ice thing another time!) For all you non-Australians out there: Nuttelex = plant-based margarine = something akin to Earth Balance.
I used this recipe as a place to start.
For the biscuit base, I used:
1/2 cup sweetened condensed coconut milk
125g coconut Nuttelex
205g packet of Leda Arrowroot biscuits
1 teaspoon grated lemon rind
1 cup desiccated coconut
Leda biscuits happen to be gluten-free, so these Lemon Coconut Slices are now both gluten-free and animal-free! Hooray! But you could also use any other slightly sweet digestive or plain biscuit.
Warm the Nuttelex with the coconut milk in a saucepan until combined.
Mmm, yellowy sludge.
Beat the biscuits to a crumby pulp! I used a knife handle because I like to live dangerously. A better option might be a food processor, or putting the biscuits in a bag and pulverising them with a safer sort of less-pointy blunt object. But that’s not as fun.
When you are too tired to destroy the biscuits any further, justify your laziness with the idea that you really should leave a few big pieces to “add texture,” then add in the lemon rind and coconut.
Add in the combined coconut milk and Nuttelex to create a sticky biscuit mixture.
Press it into a pan and refrigerate for 1 hour until firm… aka freeze for a short time while you make the icing.
For the icing (frosting), I used:
2-3 cups of icing (confectioner’s) sugar
3-4 tablespoons lemon juice
1 heaped tablespoon Nuttelex
a few tablespoons of desiccated coconut
Soften the Nuttelex and combine with sifted icing sugar and lemon juice until you have a thick icing. I added extra icing powder until I had a nice thick but pliable mix. Scoop/pour on top of firm biscuit base and spread evenly.
Top generously with coconut and place in the fridge (or freezer if you’re impatient like me) until firm.
Cut into small squares. The original recipe suggested 18 squares and I went with it. I’d probably go with 20 small squares instead next time because sugggggarrrrrrrr.
Delicious! Full of fresh lemony goodness!
And pretty darn sugary… and fatty af… and therefore delicious.
Pretty much exactly the same as I remember… except I don’t enjoy sugar as much as I used to, so I have to go drink half a dozen cups of tea right now to cleanse myself… BRB…
