March 19, 2007: Several days ago I made hedgehogs for a party I was attending. I haven't done them in many years and to find the recipe I had to go back to the old scrapbook I kept when I was first married. Gosh it's a mess!

Over the years the sticky tape I'd used to secure the clippings has turned orange with age and come adrift. Now the recipes are clamped between the pages, and I am careful to keep them that way as Page One has a very tightly written index. It's the only way I can find these recipes that are so much more than just a list of ingredients with a method. They're a journal of my early learning-to-cook years, the sort of trip down memory lane that could easily have me either spending the afternoon browsing or rushing to the kitchen to recreate something I had forgotten I ever cooked.

I found the Hedgehogs recipe simply enough. My mother-in-law had typed it out for me many years ago because it was a favourite of my new husband. I was keen to try to make the treats she had, and she was generous in helping me. I recognised her later as an unrepentant sweet tooth. Like him. She must have been delighted to discover his young wife was not anti-sugar and would continue to feed him up in the way he had begun.

When she died a couple of years ago, I inherited her hand-written recipe notebooks and it was no surprise that almost without  exception she had recorded her favourite cakes and biscuits, jams, slices and desserts. 'Anything so long as it's sweet' could have been her motto.

By the name 'Hedgehogs' she has written (I don't know why) and neither do I. The resulting chocolate slice is always cut into small squares that reveal stripes created by the broken biscuits and nuts, but I can see no resemblance to a hedgehog and no one else has ever given me an explanation either.

The closest clue I can discover is that one chocolatier, the House of Brussels Chocolate has a signature product which is its "hedgehog" chocolate - 'a moulded chocolate design that blends aesthetics with taste for a strong customer appeal', they say. Why? It appears the hedgehog is a traditional Belgian symbol of good luck. Is this the key?

Once homemade hedgehogs were a popular sweet treat in Australia, right up there with chocolate crackles and white Christmas, and a commercial version Picnic Hedgehog was created by Cadbury some years ago.

Mum's original recipe was written using imperial measurements, because that was what we used in Australia until more recently. Anyway, I think she possibly thought in pounds and ounces always.

I always substituted unsalted butter for her margarine, but did as she advised with the sugar, and otherwise pretty well followed her recipe, except I always used a 20cm square dish which I covered and chilled in the fridge. Oh, and in a pathetic attempt at some sort of calorie-control, I never iced it as she suggested.

My big mistake the other day was to take it to a picnic on a humid early-autumn day. It began to melt. The carefully cut squares began to fragment and required a strong will and great daintiness to eat. I'd forgotten they are best kept in the fridge and served a few at a time on a plate for afternoon tea, or perhaps addressed by furtive forays to the fridge when the chocolate munchies hit.

However you have them, Hedgehogs are an old-fashioned treat. Simple to make, delicious to eat. Mother knew best, obviously.

My mother-in-law would have been turning 93 today, coincidentally my husband's birthday as well, so it seems quite appropriate to share this recipe obviously a sweet one in memory of a great friend, an accomplished cook - and a truly sweet person.

Here it is, just the way she wrote it.

HEDGEHOGS (I don't know why)

4oz margarine (or unsalted butter)

1 cup sugar (I use half a cup as the biscuits are sweet)

2 tablespoons cocoa

1 egg

1 packet Morning Coffee biscuits or equivalent

3/4 cup broken walnuts

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Heat margarine (or butter), sugar and cocoa in a saucepan. Before it gets too hot , or else cool, add beaten egg and bring to the boil, stirring. Let it give a few plops. Crush biscuits in a paper bag with rolling pin, allowing some fine crushings and some larger pieces. Add walnuts. Do not pour the butter mixture into this until it cools a little as I think the hot mixture softens the biscuits. Press into a tin. I use the tin that's approximately 12 inches by 8 inches. Leave till cool and then cover with icing or I use chocolate melted enough to spread. If the tin is just out of the fridge, you will have to spread quickly as it hardens.