The vanilla slice

"A cheap treat that only serves to put on weight or a national treasure that has become woven through the tapestry of Australia's heritage?" Erle Levey, Sunshine Coast Daily

On Monday we 'did' the Mornington Peninsula with our guests. The halfway destination was Sorrento of course, and we stopped for lunch at Just Fine Food of Sorrento, which proudly claimed to be the home of Sorrento's Famous Vanilla Slice. So we had one - well Fiona ordered it - she loves vanilla slice - and we all shared it. Because it was pretty big and filling. The picture above is of the genuine article and the scene outside. Fortunately it was such a lovely day that we were able to sit outside and indulge ourselves. And incidentally our actual lunch choices were delicious too. Below is another picture of their version. Note the jam at the bottom and the icing sugar on top - I shall return to this.

Before I go on, let me say at the outset that I am not Australian, neither by birth or naturalisation. So I have none of the baggage of Australian nostalgia about vanilla slice or a sense of national pride. And there certainly is national pride involved when you start to talk about vanilla slice here in Australia. It's somewhat like lamingtons. But is vanilla slice really Australian?

In England they have something called a custard slice which is basically the same thing. Indeed Paul Hollywood of the Great British Bake-off fame describes it as "our own great British patisserie". I fail to see any great difference between the two and bearing in mind modern Australia's mostly British origins I'm inclined to think it is indeed just the same thing. Several articles I read also said that it is the same as the French mille-feuille which it patently is not, because that scrumptious thing has lots of layers of pastry and filling, not just one. If you look up the Wikipedia article on the mille-feuille (also called a Napoléon), you will see that they think that this is where the vanilla slice, or custard slice comes from, and that there are variations all around the world. And maybe the inspiration did indeed come from there, but mille-feuille is not a vanilla slice. The modern form of the mille-feuille was perfected by Carême in the late eighteenth, early nineteenth century, although they seem to think that it existed at least as far back as the sixteenth century, maybe even the fourteenth. However, I think when they are talking about this far back, they are just talking about things that combined a kind of custard with pastry. Anyway I won't fight with the Australians who consider it their own. The Australian version is a thick vanilla custard between two slices of puff pastry with a a glaze on the top. Or as the judges of the Merbein Great Vanilla Slice Triumph competition say:

“a custard with a creamy smooth texture and a balance of vanilla taste with a crisp crunchy pastry topped with a smooth and shiny glaze fondant”. Judges, Merbein Vanilla Slice Triumph

And who am I to argue with the judges?

Interestingly an American food blogger, Joe Pastry seems to give it to the Australians.

"Is the vanilla slice really the chocolate chip cookie of Australia? If so, those Aussies are more sophisticated than we give them credit for. Granted most home versions are made with powdered custard and either store bought puff pastry or mildly sweet biscuits, then topped with simple powdered sugar icing. Still pretty cool though, no?" Joe Pastry

And this is where my lack of Australianness comes in. I did see references to recipes that used powdered custard powder and biscuits, so obviously this is maybe what was cooked at home. It's definitely not what you buy in bakers and cafés though. And I have no idea whether it is true or not. I also saw one website give credit to Donna Hay's recipe as the best if you are going to make your own. Nevertheless there does seem to be some controversy over what is 'genuine'. Icing, or apparently an increasingly common trend, dusted with icing sugar? Should the icing be vanilla (Victoria), passionfruit (NSW) or pink (Queensland)? I gather that decorated pastry (chocolate swirls for example) is frowned on but common. And the filling - custard or crème patissière, gelatine or cornflour, cream as well ...? They seem to agree that it should be puff pastry and that you put a tray on top when you cook it so that the pastry doesn't puff and stays crisp. But then there are those biscuits - Sao or sweet biscuits? This is what happens when you have a basically simple, and for lack of a better word 'peasant' dish. People mess with them and they evolve over time according to the ingredients available (remember powdered eggs during and after the war?). That jam at the bottom in the Sorrento version at the top of the page is also theoretically heretical - but very nice and also increasingly common.

In Australia the controversy was heightened by our ex-Premier Jeff Kennett back in the 90s when he declared a vanilla slice he tasted in Ouen as the best he had ever had. Ouen took it to heart and started the Great Vanilla Slice Triumph competition.

And it was on. After some years the competition was passed to Merbein, whose volunteer committee became exhausted from organising it all after a few years and decided to give it to Birchip. Pandemonium. They had chosen Birchip because one Kevin Sharp of Birchip had won the competition four times with the vanilla slices shown below, and he had also once lived in Merbein.

But it seems Birchip is not within the Mildura Council boundaries and Ouen said that Merbein had no right to pass it on to whomsoever they chose. This happened in 2016. There was a big stoush about it, and I tried to find out what happened to Birchip, because the 2017 competition was held in Mildura City, after being chosen from 3 applicants. I do not know if Birchip was one of them. One is tempted to say how petty - but of course, events such as this bring tourists and locals into town and subsequently the town benefits from the extra business and publicity. And to the winners too. The Birchip Bakery now produces quantities approaching 100,000 per year as opposed to the few thousands it produced before the fame of winning the competition. The current champion is Hudak's bakery in Mildura - which sounds very local to the competition. Could there be favouritism? Surely not.

Going back to Sorrento - I still haven't found out why it's vanilla slice is so famous - as claimed on its shopfront sign. Did it win the Great Vanilla Slice Triumph once? I really don't know and there doesn't seem to be a sign saying it did - just that it is famous. Why?

And it is indeed famous, because there are lots of reviews of it and I also found an article which claimed to have set out to find the best Victorian vanilla slice. It only seems to have tested three - Sorrento, The Golden Nugget Bakery in Ballarat, and The Beechworth Bakery in Bendigo,, so one can only assume that these were prizewinners of some kind, or somehow or other famous. (Bendigo on the left and Ballarat on the right) There are obviously hundreds, if not thousands of other bakeries in Victoria which also produce excellent vanilla slices, so why this particular three I do not know.

Here are a few more trivia things on the vanilla slice - and then a couple of extra little things. In Victoria they are sometimes known - most probably to small boys - as snot blocks! Disgusting don't you think - and why anyway? They don't look like snot. Not runny enough.

And secondly just how do you eat them? We divided our Sorrento vanilla slice into four, by removing the top layer of pastry and then cutting through the rest, cutting the top into four and replacing it. Not that this necessarily made it easier. Because if you just pick it up and bite into it, then the filling oozes out at the sides - just like ice cream wafers used to do. Now there's a bit of nostalgia I can share in.

Krispy Kreme donuts - American surely - have a vanilla slice version. It looks revolting.

And the last two little things. Since we did T2 the other day, and perhaps reinforcing the Australianness of it all, T2 have a tea called Vanilla Slice:

"Velvety vanilla with summer fruits is a heavenly indulgence. A gorgeously pink infusion that is a sweet treat and a decadent delight." T2