Jam m²

Besides a need to pee, my insatiable sweet tooth is what drags me out of bed in the morning. Most mornings I lay in bladder agonising laziness thinking about what I want to bake and a lot of times it involves jam, mostly apricot jam.

Many years ago my sister gave me 3 recipe books for my birthday, one of them was by Pam Shippel and it's one of my favourites, I read it like a story book and by now it's tattered and falling apart. Many of her recipes inspire my own concoctions, but this recipe however isn't one of those, this one deserves to be made exactly as she wrote it because it's perfect!

I love the twangy sweetness of apricots in all its glorious ways, fresh (obviously), juiced, jammed, made into mebos (a salty sweet South African delicacy) and of course dried. Dried Turkish apricots is one of life's true pleasures as everything fantastic about the apricot

is intensified by drying them in the magical Turkish sun that turns them into soft chewy sunshine filled discs of yumness.

So back to those jam squares: Imagine soft buttery shortbread like biscuit layered with apricot jam, exposed to heat, sliced and cooled, the result is sweet biscuit heaven!

I usually overload the biscuit base with jam because I like it oozy but any normal person will use about half to two thirds of a tin of jam and you can use any kind of jam just as long as it isn't to runny, you'll end up with a oozy woozy mess.

Here's the recipe:

First you make a dough that's soft, smooth and not crumbly

Then you press half of the dough into the prepared baking tin

Top with Jam

Grate or crumb the rest of the dough onto the jam

Bake and cut into squares as soon as they come out of the oven

Leave to cool in the pan, gently remove. (I find a fork works best) and serve.

Jam Squares

Ingredients:

125g Butter or baking margarine

200ml Castor sugar

1 Egg

5ml Vanilla

500ml Flour

10ml Baking powder

2ml Salt

Jam of your choice. (it must be nice and thick and not to chunky)

Method:

Preheat oven to 180°C

Butter and flour a +- 23cm square baking tin or oven proof dish.

Cream the butter and castor sugar until light and fluffy.

Add vanilla and the egg and beat until smooth.

Mix the flour, baking powder and salt and mix into the butter mixture until well combined. Do not over mix or you will end up with hard biscuits.

Divide the mixture in half.

Press half the mixture into the prepared tin.

Spread the jam over and crumb the unused half of the dough over the jam.

Bake in the preheated oven for 20 - 25 minutes until light golden brown.

Slice into squares as soon as you remove it from the oven.

Leave to cool in the pan.

Gently remove and serve.