Traditional Scottish macaroon bars.
Made from mashed potato and icing sugar, then covered with toasted coconut. An unlikely combination, but they weren't too sweet and had a soft, but crunchy, tablet like texture.
Not to be confused with the Macaroon bars being sold today, by the same people who used to sell "real" macaroon bars, but now make them with fondant icing covered in toasted coconut and are sickly sweet.
Apparently, the traditional potato bit of the recipe had too short a shelf life, and had to be removed, but the current offerings bear little resemblance to the taste and texture of the original.
Even craft confectioners who sell through Scottish Delicatessen's don't make traditional Macaroon bars. But, my sister in law, sometimes makes a batch for me at birthdays and Christmas
Traditional Cornish cream teas
Not from my youth, but the other thing I miss after more than 40 years of going on holiday to Cornwall (sometimes up to five times a year) is a "traditional" Cornish cream tea; one made with Cornish splits and not with scones.
When we first went to Cornwall there were a few places still selling splits (and proud of hanging onto the tradition) but in more recent years we haven't found anywhere that sells them. The people still doing splits told me it required much more effort than doing scones, and needed a lot of motivation and enthusiasm to keep the tradition going as it wasn't commercially viable.
Some years ago (20 years ago?) the National Trust started to offer Splits as an option, but it only lasted one or two years.
The only place we have them now is at home, on special occasions, when Moira (my wife) will bake the splits, buy the cream, and buy or make the strawberry jam.
