bar challenge

My friends Karoline, Jessica, and I drove to Northampton, Massachusetts a couple of weeks ago to check out the annual tent sale at Webs (a HUGE yarn store). On our way home, we stopped at a bakery and Jess got something called a "buddy" bar. It looked like it was made with a graham cracker crust, chocolate chips, walnuts, M & M's, and coconut. Jess enjoyed it so much so I took a photo of it (above) and made it a challenge to one day try to recreate it.

Fast forward a couple of weeks to the baking contest at work where we had a "bars" theme. What a good time to try to recreate that bar! So here is my creation:

I called it the chocolate chip, M & M's, coconut, caramel gooey bar. And it was super loaded with sugar! I forgot to include the walnuts but Jess said it was still an amazingly good bar and pretty close to the one she had on our trip. It didn't win the baking contest but they did disappear!

I have a bad habit of not writing down recipes so here's an extraction from my brain of how they were put together:

Crust ingredients:

- 1 stick of butter at room temperature
- 1 cup of flour
- 1/4 cup of sugar

Crust directions:

1. Mix the butter and sugar together until it's nice and fluffy, then mix in the flour.

2. Pour into an 8"x8" baking dish lined with parchment paper (the paper will make it much easier to clean up later, trust me!).

3. Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 15 minutes, or until it's a nice light brown color.

Filling ingredients:

- 1 cup of light brown sugar
- 1/2 bag of M & M's
- 1 bag of sweetened coconut flakes
- 1 bag of chocolate chips
- 1 bag of little caramel balls (in the baking aisle; can't remember the name of the company that makes them -- or you can use little caramel candies but you'll have to unwrap each of them)
- 1 egg white
- 1 tsp of vanilla
- 1/2 stick of butter

Filling directions:

1. Beat the butter, egg white, vanilla, and brown sugar in a mixer until smooth.

2. Beat in the coconut flakes, then remove the bowl from the mixer.

3. Mix in by hand the chocolate chips and M & M's.

4. Spread the caramel balls on the crust, then top with the filling mixture.

5. Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 25 minutes or until the coconut is browned on top. Remove from the oven and let it completely cool down before cutting into it so that it has time to firm up.

6. To cut it, simply lift it out of the dish using the parchment paper.



So back to the baking contest ... we had some great competition this time! Here is a little plate of the contenders:

From top left, clockwise: banana oatmeal bar; coconut, M &Ms, chocolate chip, caramel gooey bar; brownie with mint and raspberry; Neiman Marcus bar; and rhubarb crisp. The rhubarb crisp ended up taking the trophy whisk.

P.S. The crust recipe is a good one to use if you just want simple sugar cookies to snack on. They turn out like shortbread cookies and are super simple to make!

pretzel rolo pecan treats

Holy crappers, where did the year go?? To make up for my lack of posting I thought I'd share this recipe for a super easy peasy pretzel Rolo pecan treat that I learned from my husband's aunt Elaine last weekend. Super easy peasy! And super yummy according to my at-home-taste-tester and obliging coworkers. :)

Ingredients:

- a bag of Snyder's butter snap pretzels
- a bag of Rolo candies
- whole, shelled pecans

Directions:

- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Place a piece of foil or parchment paper onto a baking sheet.
- Lay whole pieces of pretzels onto the sheet in one layer.
- Unpeel some Rolos (seriously, this is the hardest part!)
- Refrain from eating a lot of the Rolos. One or two, yes. Handful, no.
- Put one Rolo on top of each pretzel.
- Put one whole pecan piece on top of the Rolo.
- Bake in the oven for 3 minutes (no, not the most efficient use of a 350 degree oven, I know ...)
- Remove from the oven and smoosh each pecan down so that the Rolo gets flattened.
- Let them cool down and then put them in the fridge to harden.
- Enjoy!!

anne's nibbly cookies recipe

I was craving bread from the Danish Pastry House yesterday (see what too many trips to the farmers market will do to ya?!), and luckily my parking angel was with me and I got a metered spot nearby. So after I bought a loaf of their Epine baguette (so yummy!) I walked by the Taza Chocolate booth to see their new chococycle. It's really cool! I decided to pick up a large bag (6 ounces) of their organic chocolate covered nibs to make something.

(I will refrain from saying what the husband said these look like.)

I didn't have any plan in mind so I was happy to find this recipe on the back of the package when I got home. They turned out great! Well, I should say that my husband didn't really love them like he loves regular chocolate chip cookies that I make but everyone at work who tried them loved them! They were super easy to make and they came out so soft. The only thing I didn't do in the recipe was add the nutmeg and that was simply because I didn't have any on hand.

I love using ice cream scoopers for cookie dough. These only took 10 minutes in the oven because they were small and bite-sized.

It was definitely a good idea to use the parchment paper on top of the pan because it made clean up a breeze!

So my friends, if you'd like the recipe you should go out and get a bag of these lovely little nibs!

Oh and by the way, speaking of yummy baked goods. Check out this cardamom cake that my coworker, Stephanie, made (yes, the same one with the amazing basil garden). Our departments hosted today's coffee hour this morning which is why I brought the cookies in to work. I really like the green plate that she brought it on, and the cake was as delicious as it was beautiful!

Happy baking everyone! :)

stack o' goodness

I made these tonight after finding the recipe in the December 2007 issue of Bon Appetit magazine. They're called "Brownie Thins" and the recipe is from a book called "Homemade in a Hurry" by Andrew Schloss. I tried to get a copy of it at Borders today but they said you have to order it. Oh well. Christmas is coming. :)

A couple of things to note: the original recipe calls for 1/4 teaspoon of almond extract and - well kiddos, we all know that this chica is allergic to nuts - so I just doubled up on the vanilla extract and used 1/2 teaspoon total. It also suggested putting chopped pistachios on top (which sounds really yummy) but we know where that suggestion went. [insert sound of toilet flushing here]

Before I go on with the recipe, I think I should also explain that -- if, let's say, you end up getting the book and later read the "real" directions, you notice that I skipped a couple of [rather complicated seeming] steps -- I used an ice cream scoop to put the batter onto the baking pans. Seriously, his method sounded way too difficult and I love using these different sized ice cream scoops (a very handy gift from our stepmom) for all sorts of recipes because it just takes the guess work out of exact proportions, etc. I think they sell them at places like Williams-Sonoma and Crate & Barrel.

Ingredients:

• 6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• 2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 large egg
• 3 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon all purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (see my notes above)
• pinch of salt (I used sea salt - is that bad?)

Directions:

1. Position rack in the lowest third of your oven; preheat it to 350 degrees.
2. Butter 2 baking sheets. (You might want to read my comments/see the photo below.)
3. Place the butter pieces and chocolate in a medium microwave-safe bowl. Microwave on medium-high power until almost completely melted, about 1 minute. (You may have to do it again for like 15 second intervals until it's melted.) Whisk until smooth.
4. Add sugar and egg; whisk until smooth, about a minute.
5. Add flour, vanilla, and salt; stir just to blend.
6. Let batter stand 10 minutes. (At this point, the batter seemed really runny, so it's important to let it sit in the bowl for the 10 minutes. It thickened up like pudding. Cool.)
7. Okay, so here's where I skipped around his fancy dance of getting the batter onto the baking pans -- basically, I used the ice cream scoop and just skimmed batter off the top of the surface, then plopped it onto the pans. Very simple.
8. Bake cookies, one sheet at a time, until slightly darker at edges and firm in the center, about 7 minutes.
9. Cool on sheet for 2 minutes, then transfer them to a rack to cool completely. (Note: they come out rather cakey and so it helps to clean the spatula off after transferring three cookies so that you don't mess up the edges.)
10. Have designated taste tester grade your performance. :)

Oh so good!