Many of the old recipes used certain ratios of butter, sugar and flour, and although these could be doubled or halved, they remained constant until the 1990s, she said. This makes for a slice dominated by the sweet rich icing rather than the crunchy base, she said. In recent recipes the quantities of butter, sugar and eggs for the base had doubled and the flour increased by . These earliest recipes contained eggs, sugar, dates, walnuts, flour, baking powder and vanilla, but no butter, and the resulting slice was chewy. Some people say you can reduce the sugar in most recipes by a quarter or even half without much noticeable difference.

Source: Otago Daily Times February 20, 2018 16:07 UTC