Belgian Squares- Kiwi style
While The Experimental Gourmand is awaygazing at the snow-topped mountains of Andorra, one of her brothers hasoffered to talk about his adventures in cooking with his children.
Our ten-year-old daughter startedintermediate school this year, so she’s now doing home economics (sorry – ‘FoodTechnology’). On the first day, they made lemonade. The nice thing for me was thatI’ve made lemonade with the girls for years. It was the first thing we ‘cooked’together. At first, they would wash the lemons and mix the lemonade, while Idid everything else. As they got older, they learned to squeeze the lemonhalves and measure the sugar and water. Sometimes, I would put the lemonsqueezer on the floor, which made it easier for them to push down on the lemonhalves.
Now, Miss Ten can do it all herself,including cutting the lemons. She told me that she likes Food Technologybecause she gets to cook all by herself (does that mean we hover too much?).She also likes that she is starting a recipe book in class.
Miss Ten and Miss Eight are both getting moreinterested in cooking and baking. I made salt-water taffy last weekend and theyhelped. Miss Ten measured out the flavouring and colouring for me, and bothgirls helped pull the taffy once it was cool. It reminded me that, no matterwhat I’m cooking, there’s usually something they can do to help.
There’s a range of desserts in New Zealand,where we live, that are called ‘slices’. They are square like Americanbrownies, but the texture can be somewhat cakey or somewhat fudgey. They alsooften have icing (frosting). Some of the common ones are ginger crunch,peppermint slice, chocolate fudge, caramel slice, and lollie cake.
Miss Ten has learned to make Belgian (or Belgium) square,which is like cakey gingerbread with frosting. I helped Miss Eight make a batchfor their lunches this week. She did a lot of it herself – measuring theingredients and mixing it up. I made sure she followed the recipe and did thefinal stirring and baking. She also chose the colour for the icing.
Here’s the recipe, originally from grandmaand copied from my wife’s handwritten recipe book:
Belgian Square
4 oz butter
4 oz sugar
2 eggs
1 Tbspn golden syrup
1½ cups flour
1 tspn baking powder
2 tspns mixed spices
2 tspns cinnamon
Cream butter and sugar. Add egg and syrupand mix well. Add dry ingredients. Press into sponge roll tin (or 8” bakingtin). Bake approximately 20 minutes at 350 degrees F. Ice when cool (withbutter frosting – just on the top) and sprinkle with jelly crystals (that is,Jell-O powder from the packet – or use cake decorating sprinkles). Cut intosquares or fingers.
Miss Ten has made this several times withMum, doing a bit more each time. There are several standard operations involved(‘Cream butter and sugar’), so it’s good for learning about baking. Overall,the recipe is pretty forgiving. The hardest part is waiting for the cake tocool enough to ice it.
