Recently some of my friends have been hitting some very adult milestones. This year one group of friends has celebrated a wedding, another couple have welcomed a baby and one friend has become a first time home buyer.

I did do a little hunt for something homey to give as a gift, but short of giving a succulent (an excellent option in my opinion but I couldn’t be sure how it would be received) baking was my best option. I found some cute tins and started daydreaming about what to fill them with.

This recipe, of course, is another Edmond’s find. I was interested in trying it as it looks like the slice equivalent of an Afghan biscuits. It tastes quite similar too, but it has more of a crunchy texture which goes well with the softer and sweeter chocolate icing.

Do you like my piped houses? I don’t bring out the piping bag very often as it’s so fiddly to clean I really try to avoid it from the start, but I knew I had to do something to elevate these from common home baking to a gift-worthy bake. I’m pretty happy with the outcome, I like the way the clean white icing contrasts with the dark chocolate, yum!

So here is the recipe:

Edmonds Chocolate Nut Bars

Ingredients:

125 g butter, softened

1 cup of sugar (I only used about 3/4 cup)

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

1 1/4 cups plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 tablespoons cocoa

1 1/4 cups cornflakes

3/4 cup coconut

1/4 cup chopped walnuts

Method:

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla beating well. Sift flour, baking powder and cocoa together. Mix into creamed mixture. Add cornflakes, coconut and walnuts, mixing well. Press mixture into greased 20 by 30cm tin. Bake at 180 degrees celsius for 30 minutes. When cold ice with chocolate icing.

Chocolate Icing

My go to chocolate icing recipe is icing sugar, cocoa, butter and hot water. I scale the ingredients up and down depending on how much I need and add a little more water or icing sugar as necessary to get the texture right. To ice this slice I used about 2 cups of icing sugar, 3 tablespoons of cocoa, 1 tablespoon of softened butter and enough hot water to get a thick runny texture.

Happy baking guys, let ,me know if you give this one a try!