maker*land.: No-bake orange slice.

Last night, we had a lovely barbecue dinner at the home of some dear friends. The food is always awesome there, and we are always told not to bring a thing. But I hate turning up with nothing, and usually make something to have with coffee. I know my friend likes lemon bars, and was all set to make some, until I notice my lack of lemons. Only one, and I needed two. Boo!

However, I did have two oranges, so I changed up my recipe for no-bake lemon bars into orange ones. (And when I say my recipe, I mean the one written on the back of a Repco Auto Service receipt that is tucked into my cookbook and which was probably copied from an old Woman's Weekly while waiting at the doctor's surgery.) Here's the recipe, if you would like to give it a go.

1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk
125g butter
1 250g packet of Scotch Finger biscuits, finely crushed
1 cup dessicated coconut
Zest of one orange
Juice of one orange

And for the orange icing:
1 3/4 cup icing sugar
Juice of one orange
15g of soft butter

Grease and line an 11 x 7 inch pan and set aside. In a mixing bowl, place crushed biscuits, coconut and orange zest and mix together well. Place condensed milk and butter into a saucepan and stir over a low heat until butter has melted and mixture is combined. Remove from heat, add orange juice to milk mixture and stir to combine. Pour milk mixture over dry ingredients and mix together until combined. Press into the greased pan and refrigerate until firm.

To make the orange icing, mix together sifted icing sugar, orange juice and butter in a bowl until smooth. Spread over the chilled slice. (The original recipe calls for extra coconut to sprinkle over the top if you so desire. I was in a twinkly mood, so I scattered silver cachous on mine.) Again, return to the fridge until icing has set and then cut into squares. Yum!

We are presently in the middle of another heatwave, and these kind of no-bake recipes make me very happy!

And look who else is happy! Someone dodged a bullet...