Taste Imperial Maple Pecan Slices...

Who doesn’t love the maple and pecan slice that you can buy at food outlets around campus? The syrupy biscuit base, gooey but crunchy – topped with decadent dark chocolate. I am definitely a fan and wanted to have a go at making them. I tried looking for a recipe online but had no luck. Lots of recipes for pecan pie, peanut butter traybakes and caramel squares, but none for maple and pecan slices. So I decided to come up with a recipe for them – and in doing so, checked out the cost to compare them to the price we pay on campus...

Ingredients:

160g butter

4 tbsp of maple (or golden) syrup

40g granulated sugar

130g digestive biscuits, crushed into fingernail sized pieces

120g plain flour

60g porridge oats

60g pecans, chopped into fingernail sized pieces

1 tsp vanilla essence

100g dark chocolate

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C/Gas Mark 4 and butter an 8 inch/20cm diameter cake tin. Line with baking paper if you wish (optional.)

Melt the butter, syrup and sugar in a saucepan over a low heat. Add the crushed biscuits, flour, oats, pecans and vanilla essence to the pan and mix together.

Pour the mixture into the tin and press down with a fork. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes until lightly golden, be careful not to overbake.

While the base cools, melt the chocolate slowly in a pan over a low heat. Pour the melted chocolate over the cooled biscuit base and leave in the fridge until the chocolate has set. Cut into 12 slices and enjoy!

Cost breakdown and tips

I used golden syrup in my version as it’s a lot cheaper than maple syrup - you get 98% of the taste for about a tenth of the cost. Obviously you probably can’t/shouldn’t call it a ‘maple’ and pecan slice, but I think “syrupy pecan slice” sounds just as good!

You’re probably likely to have most of the ingredients in the cupboard/fridge already - i.e. butter, sugar and flour. Otherwise, replacing them isn’t a big deal - but I priced all the ingredients on April 1:

Sainsbury’s Basics butter (250g @ £1.20), 77p

Tate and Lyle Golden Syrup (454g @ 98p), 25p

Sainsbury’s Fairtrade granulated sugar (1kg @ 89p), 13p

Sainsbury’s Basics digestive biscuits (400g @ 45p), 15p

Sainsbury’s Basics plain flour (1.5kg @ 65p), 5p

Sainsbury’s Scottish Porridge Oats (500g @ 65p), 8p

Sainsbury’s Pecan Nuts (200g @ £3), 90p

Dr Oetker Vanilla Essence (38ml @ £1.08), 17p

100g bar Sainsbury’s basics dark chocolate, 33p

That’s a total cost of £2.83, which is 24p a slice (a saving of 77p per slice, or a huge £9.24 for every 12 slices based on current Taste Imperial prices).

The most expensive ingredient is the pecan nuts - if you have no other future use for the leftovers nuts and don’t want to buy them, you could add another 60g of digestive biscuits to get the crunch (obviously forgoing the pecan part of the ‘maple and pecan slice’, now it should be called a crunchy syrupy slice.)

Alternatively, my favourite variation on this involves using 90g of crunchy peanut butter substituted for 80g of the butter (hey presto, now the bake has evolved to a syrupy peanut slice).

I encourage you to experiment with this recipe and get in touch with Felix Food if you come up with any other yummy variations, or if you have other Taste Imperial favourites that you’ve recreated at home.