Who owns a recipe, anyway?

A slightly hacked version of my mother-in-law's recipe for caramel slice, plus how to cheat at making confit duck.

Unless you’ve been on a news break this week, you’ll have noticed that caramel slice is having a moment thanks to a breathlessly reported ‘food fight’ between two Australian food writers. In one corner, Nagi Maehashi of RecipeTin Eats. In the other, Brooke Bellamy of Brooki’s Bakehouse. In brief: Maehashi has claimed that Bellamy ‘stole’ her caramel slice recipe for her recent book, ‘Bake with Brooki’. Bellamy has demurred, but she has offered to remove the offending recipe from further reprints of the book to “prevent further aggravation”. Another internet-famous food writer has weighed in, claiming that Bellamy used one of her (uncredited) recipes in the book too. The plot is thickening like custard by the day.

Not Nagi’s - or Brooke’s - caramel slice (I swear!)

In part, I think this story has gained traction because it’s two women, who can be jointly maligned by the description ‘food blogger’ or ‘influencer’, having a fight. Pass the popcorn, the internet is saying, let’s watch these bitches carve each other up.

CaramelGate isn’t the first time recipe copyright has come up, and it won’t be the last. What it does do (and I can’t decide if this is helpful to my trade or not), is shine a light on the craft of writing recipes - and the murky legal territory of who owns them. (This story neatly explains the legal view.) It also highlights that recipe books, like all books, often have the unseen hand of a ghostwriter putting them together. Once upon a time, that was a real person (like yours truly). Now, I suspect, old mate ChatGPT might be the unseen sous chef in many cases. This can’t be a good thing, except ChatGPT probably finds it less painful to have to ghost write in the style of someone who favours multiple exclamation marks.

I’ve long thought that a recipe - by which I mean the actual recipe, not the headnote about its provenance - is a narrative tale with actors, actions, elemental forces and - ideally - a satisfying denouement. The recipe writer’s job is to keep the reader engaged the whole way through and to ensure that they don’t miss anything out. To do that successfully, they need to have lived and breathed the action so they can flag up potential pitfalls. Ideally, they’ll also remember to include all the ingredients and steps in the method, but maybe ChatGPT is better at that part (I’m still mortified at some of these kinds of errors in Homecooked).

This is what two cans of condensed milk, nearly half a pound of butter and sundry other ingredients not usually recommended by nutritionists will get you.

Anyway… over Anzac weekend I did a lot of lying around eating my mother-in-law’s caramel slice. She’s a renowned baker with a fiercesome productivity rate (possibly the result of having three sons) and when we visit my in-laws the tins are always full with her signature shortbread and Afghans. This time though, she’d pushed the boat out with a superlative caramel slice that we couldn’t stop eating. My brother-in-law, who lives nearby, even came over to pinch a couple of pieces from the fridge (“she doesn’t bake it for us anymore,” my sister-in-law said mournfully, after I told her I’d eaten three pieces that morning. “We only get the boring stuff now, like shortbread and gingernuts.”)

When I told my mother-in-law how much we were enjoying it (and apologised for eating it all), she laughed and said, “I’ll give you the recipe, it’s very easy’’. I’d actually half-wanted her to say, ‘oh, let me fit making another batch into my day along with working and cooking dinner for you all’ but this did seem like a fairer option. So I duly photographed the recipe print-out - she couldn’t remember where it had come from - and we had a good laugh that a recipe containing TWO tins of condensed milk had the temerity to also include a nutritional breakdown. I’ll spare you those details for the good of your health.

My daughter, a connoisseur of her grandmother’s baking, says this slice “has the perfect ratios”. I can only agree.

Not-quite-Nana’s caramel slice

Here’s is my slightly tweaked version of the recipe my MIL uses, which is very similar to this recipe. One look at the ingredients is enough to a) rot your teeth and b) indicate why it’s so addictive.

For this version, I’ve added some ground ginger and salt to the base, then added salt and vinegar to the caramel (this is a trick I read about in a column by Australian food writer Matt Preston - he said ‘an old farmer’s wife’ had taught him to do it, because it takes down the sweetness. I’ve also adjusted the method slightly (with my method there’s less washing up afterwards. Win!) Note: you need to bake the base BEFORE adding the caramel topping. It will still work if you miss this step and forget, but baking it first adds an important textural crunch.

Makes about 30 pieces - you’ll want two pieces, but you really only need one

For the base:

125g butter

1/2 cup lightly packed brown sugar

1/2 cup desiccated coconut

1 cup plain flour

1 tsp ground ginger

1/4 tsp salt

For the caramel:

100g butter

1/3 cup golden syrup

2 x 395g tins condensed milk

1 1/2 tsp wine vinegar

1/4 tsp salt

For the chocolate topping:

175g dark chocolate (I use Whittaker’s Dark Ghana 72% cacao)

2 tsp neutral-tasting oil

Heat the oven to 180C.

Melt the first measure of butter in a medium saucepan set over low heat. Set aside to cool while you line a 28 x 18cm baking pan with baking paper and get all the other ingredients ready.

Add the sugar, coconut, flour, ground ginger and salt to the butter and stir well to combine. Press this mixture evenly into the prepared tin. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until light gold. Set aside.

Wipe out the saucepan, then set it back on low heat. Add the second measure of butter, the golden syrup and the condensed milk. Cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture is thick and starting to catch on the bottom (don’t leave it, it will burn!) Add the vinegar and salt and stir well, then remove from the heat. Pour over the cooked base and return the pan to the oven for a further 25 minutes, until it’s evenly browned on top. Set aside to cool.

Melt the chocolate and oil together (you can reuse the trusty saucepan in a double-boiler arrangement here), then pour over the caramel layer. Set aside until completely cold and set before slicing. Cut into bars and store in an airtight container in the fridge.

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Good Things

This isn’t David Lebovitz’ duck confit, but rather one served at ‘Le Code Bar’ (bar code, gettit?) in La Sauvetat-du-Dropt in September 2019.

David Lebovitz’ Duck Confit

One of my most-used cookbooks is My Paris Kitchen by US chef David Lebovitz. It’s the platonic ideal of a cookbook - useful, beautiful, insightful and written with great humour. The recipe I make the most from it is his cheat’s duck confit, which is one of the best, easiest, most praised things I’ve ever made. Essentially you pack a flock (a flutter?) of duck legs into a baking dish, anoint them with a few herbs and spices, salt and a touch of gin (or, as I did last night, rum) and bake them for just shy of three hours. Then you eat them with homemade frites and a green salad tossed in garlicky vinaigrette and feel magnificent. Plus, you can save all the rendered duck fat for other uses (there’s a recipe for duck fat cookies in the book, which I haven’t - yet - been brave enough to try in case I can’t stop making them).

Slow Horses

When I wasn’t eating my mother-in-law’s baking or surfing I was rewatching Slow Horses, which is every bit as brilliant - if not more so - the second time around. Hard to think of Gary Oldham being married to Uma Thurman once upon a time, once you’ve seen him as Jackson Lamb, isn’t it?

How about ‘dem apples?

I don’t think we have quite enough homegrown apples left to warrant ‘canning’ (aka bottling), but if you do, check out Zoe’s comprehensive how-to guide - which also includes advice on how to prep tomatoes, chickpeas and lentils. Genius!

Next time on Fancy Butter… what my mother taught me about feeding people.