Ginsberg misses out. My mum's chocolate slice recipe

If you've been to one of my poetry workshops you'll know that everyone becomes much more creative after a serve of decadent northern European home baking, preferably involving chocolate. By popular demand, here's the recipe for my mum's chocolate slice.

Allen Ginsberg, who died before I got around to inviting him, wrote a satirical poem entitled 'Cmon pigs of Western civilisation, eat more grease'. Hmm. Well, if it worries you, substitute a politically-correct binding ingredient for the melted butter.

Ginsberg might have called this a brownie, but my mum is English. When I was a kid we had slices and biscuits, not brownies and cookies. Cookies existed only on Sesame Street.

Jackson's mum's chocolate slice

Slice

• 125g butter
• 1 cup self-raising flour (I use half wholemeal, half white)
• 1 cup desiccated coconut
• 1/2 cup sugar (use less or more as you prefer. I use brown sugar)
• 1 tablespoon cocoa powder (find a nice dark organic one)
• 1 egg

Icing

• 1 cup icing sugar
• 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
• Hot water to mix until runny

Topping

• About a tablespoon of dessicated coconut

Method  

• Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.
• Line a slice tray with non-stick baking paper. Let the paper extend a little beyond the tray.

• Melt the butter.
• In a large bowl, mix flour, coconut, sugar and cocoa.
• In a small bowl, beat the egg.
• Add the egg and melted butter to the large bowl and mix well.
• Tip into the tray and press down firmly. (Make a fist and press using the flat surface formed by the middles of your fingers -- or if your hands never worked a day and can't take the heat, use the back of a spoon.)
• Bake for 20 minutes.

It has to be cut while hot and still soft, and iced immediately so that the icing melts in. Otherwise it's dry, biscuity and not half as yummy.

• While the slice bakes, sift the icing sugar and cocoa into a bowl, and boil the kettle.

• Use a sharp knife to divide the baked slice into squares or rectangles.
• Gradually mix hot water into the icing mix, a teaspoonful at a time, until it's runny.
• Quickly distribute the icing over the slice and spread it with the back of a spoon. There's an art to doing this quickly and evenly so it melts in nicely and doesn't pool in the gaps between the cut squares. (Oh, and you have to spread it right to the edges of the tray. I insist! My mum used to be lazy about that. I considered it grossly unfair when I got a half-dry edge piece and my little brother got a choc-soaked middle piece.)
• Sprinkle it with coconut.
• Leave to set. Put it in the fridge or freezer to speed this up.
• Once it's set you can grasp the edges of the baking paper and lift the slice in one piece from the tray onto a cutting board. Use a large sharp knife to separate the squares.
• Hide it well if you want it to last.

This freezes really well and tastes great straight from the freezer.

It occurs to me now that it might be even better with rice bubbles added to the mix. Or chopped hazelnuts, perhaps.

Best served with excellent coffee, although children might prefer a glass of milk.