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My daughter and I spent 10 delightful days in Oxford and the Cotswalds in July. We bought some wonderful dessert bars called Almond Slices in a bakery in Stow-on-the-Wold. I have exhausted my resources in trying to find the recipe. Can anyone help me with this? I've been craving these treats since our return to Texas. "Thank y'all"!

I have sent you my recipe for Almond Slices direct to your email address, hope its what you are looking for, enjoy!

Jan - I'd love it too!

You'd better post it here; I think a line is forming, and I want to be in it! Betty

You'd better post it or you'll be emailing til your fingers fall off!

It wasn't Bakewell Tart slices or anything, was it? A stellarossa favourite.

Oh puhleez post that recipe on this site. I am in line too!

Hey you guys, I never expected so many comments about a recipe! Perhaps Fodors should have another catagory on the message board for 'regional recipes'. I will post the recipe later today as I am emailing from my other email address at present (work!). How could I resist so many pleas. For Tony, yes it is a bit simular to Bakewell tart (one of my favourites also). For Elvira, just loved your travel report.

Well here is the recipe,hope you all enjoy it. As you no doubt know the measures used in our recipes are in pounds and ounces (oz.) or grams and kgs, so you will need to do a bit of converting. I believe 4oz. is roughly equal to 1 cup. That conversion has worked OK for me the other way round when using an American cook book.Also caster sugar is a fine grained white sugar used for cake making (finer grained than granulated). First you need to make some Short Crust Pastry:- 8 oz. plain flour 1/4 level teaspn. salt 4 oz. butteror other fat ( margarine or a mixture of margarine and lard). Cold water to mix (aprox. 8 teaspns.) Sift flour and salt and rub in the fat till mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Sprinkle the water over, draw mixture together using the fingertips, knead lightly until smooth and crack free Place in a polthene bag and allow to rest in the fridge for a short time. Almond Slices Pastry (as above) 2 tablespns. raspberry jam 4 oz. caster sugar 4 oz. sifted icing sugar 6 oz. ground almonds 1 standard egg White of one standard egg 1/2 teaspn. almond essence or extract 1 oz. blanched and split almonds Roll out the pastry to a 6in. x 10in. rectangle Transfer to a buttered baking tray Pinch up long edges of the pastry between finger and thumb to form a raised border Cover the pastry base with jam Combine the sugars with the ground almonds Mix to a paste with the whole egg,egg white and almond essence Cover the jam with the almond mixture, spreading it evenly with a knife Decorate with the split almonds Bake just above the centre of a moderately hot oven (200',400'F or gas regulo 6) for 25 minutes Cool on a wire rack, cut into 14 slices when cold Enjoy!

speaking of regional delicacies... I am a big fan of British comedy shows that are shown here on PBS, and my latest favorite is As Time Goes By. One of the characters is always talking about eating custard tarts. In the US we don't have a specific treat with that name that I know of, but I conjure up a vision of a small tartlet filled with some custard. Is there more to it than that? Is this a bakery item, or does the British equivalent of Nabisco sell them in supermarkets in a cellophane package? Just curious.

Custard tarts are indeed a small tartlets or somtimes large tart that can be cut into slices once cooked, the filling is usually an egg custard made from eggs sugar and milk which is poured into the cases, and sets during cooking they are usually topped with a little grated nutmeg, another yummy bakery item. Best home made or if not from a local bakery shop, not a supermarket.

The custard tarts sound exactly like a thing I've been buying in Chinatown for ages. A very small pie crust filled with egg custard. I wonder how similar they are to the British version. My favorite bakery-good from the Cotswalds (sorry, can't remember which village, but it was high on the tourist trail as it was the only day I took an organized tour...won't do that again). It was called a "bee sting" and was about 8 inches across, and filled with lemon custard. I bought it because my husband keeps bees, but it was just wonderful. Anyone have a recipe?

Jan, I copied the recipe, too; thanks. In a U.S. measuring cup,4 oz. is half a cup. Would this change your recipe?

Welcome to Adventures in Measuring, where our lucky winners will get Almond Slices: Carolyn, 4 FLUID ounces is half a cup. However, as one's breakfast ceral boxes, say, we're talking weight, not volume. One pound of flour contains 4 cups One pound of sugar contains 2 cups If I try to do the math, you'll all see why I majored in literature, so I'll leave that to someone else.

And, if you sift the flour, it's 5 cups. That's why I buy stuff at the bakery

I have always been amused at the English cookbooks that weigh everything including milk. But that is still not as bad as my my mother's chocolate cake recipe that calls for an egg of butter. It was a depression era recipe. Were eggs smaller than now? I gather they were not graded for size.

Oh dear! As martha says welcome to Adventures in Measuring. All I can tell you is that the original poster has made the slices and emailed me to say they were fine. Whether she took my advice re cups for ounces, perhaps she would like to post here and let you all know. In the meantime I will stick to my trusty old kitchen scales.....

May I just add that Ms Gray has every detail right ? I've greatly enjoyed this correspondence. They have a wide range of knowlege in the University of Southampton ! Ben Haines, London

I had not been looking at this thread because almond slices would be my idea of hell. However, I have a work week which makes early death look like a good option, and find myself reading EVERYTHING on Fodor's to make life more bearable. I have an excellent book called "traditional Scottish recipes" whichtells you how to make ll sorts of stuff my granmothers made and not much else. If anyone wants thetraditional recipe for haggis ( especially if you want to suff it in a tube!) I can assist. But I especially wanted to share with you a bakery product(or cake, as we would call it- actually in North East Scotland, we'd call it a fine piece or a fancy piece, leading to masses of confusion in places where a fancy piece is something Qite different...but I digress) called a Soo's Lug (pig's ear, for the uninitiated. This is a piece of twisted pastry (giving an ear-like shape) with a sugar glaze.. I have never seen it out of Scotland, but then, we are reputed to have the worst diet in the western world. Where else can you get deep-fried Mars Bars? (in batter, yet?)