Category: Bars

Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut (Sometimes You Don’t)

March 2, 2010

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It’s been a while since I last talked about how I don’t like nuts in baked goods.  So, if you are new here, I don’t like nuts in baked goods.  I like nuts, I like baked goods but I don’t like them together.

And yet, I like people.  I like cooking and baking for people and some people do like nuts in baked goods.  Hence these bars.

For just about every yoga retreat, I have made some kind of cookie and some kind of bar for dessert.  I was leaning heavily toward lemon bars this time but to me, lemon screams spring and this was a winter retreat.  So along came the nuts.

Several years ago, when I was eight months pregnant with my second child and we had just moved into a new house, I thought it was a great idea to tell my then clients that I was making gift bags for the holidays.  One client ordered five large bags and 20 small bags.  Do you call that nesting?  Or maybe you call it being a crazy person?  Either way, every night I was in my brand new kitchen baking my pregnant little heart out.  I made these bars and I filed the recipe away in the “I would never eat this but they sure do look good” category.  Honey.  Mmmm.  I love honey.  Almost enough to eat it with nuts.

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One Year Ago:  Rosemary Flatbread with Blue Cheese Grapes and Honey

Honey Nut Squares
Adapted from Gourmet
Makes 25 1-inch squares

For crust
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 stick (1/2 cup) cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 large egg, lightly beaten

For topping
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon mild honey
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 tablespoon heavy cream
1/2 cup whole almonds with skins, toasted
3/4 cup hazelnuts, toasted and any loose skins rubbed off in a kitchen towel
1/4 cup pine nuts, lightly toasted

Make crust:
Butter a 9-inch square metal baking pan (2 inches deep) and line with 2 crisscrossed sheets of foil, leaving a 2-inch overhang on all sides. Butter foil.

Blend together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and butter with your fingertips or a pastry blender (or pulse in a food processor) until most of mixture resembles coarse meal with small (roughly pea-size) butter lumps. Add egg and stir with a fork (or pulse) until a crumbly dough forms.

Turn out dough onto a work surface and divide into 4 portions. With heel of your hand, smear each portion once or twice in a forward motion to help distribute fat. Gather dough together with scraper.

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Press dough evenly onto bottom (but not up sides) of baking pan and bake in middle of oven until edges are golden and begin to pull away from sides of pan, 15 to 20 minutes. Cool in pan on rack.

Make topping:
Bring honey, brown sugar, and salt to a boil in a 2-quart heavy saucepan over moderate heat, stirring until sugar is dissolved, then boil, without stirring, 2 minutes. Add butter and cream and boil, stirring, 1 minute. Remove from heat and stir in all nuts until completely coated.

Pour nut mixture over pastry crust, spreading evenly, and bake in middle of oven until topping is caramelized and bubbling, 12 to 15 minutes. Cool completely in pan on a rack. Lift dessert out of pan using foil overhang and cut into 25 squares.

(Honey nut squares keep, layered between sheets of wax paper, in an airtight container at room temperature 1 week.)



Category: Bars, Dessert, Yoga Retreat Food
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Holly B’s Oatmeal Carmelitas

January 12, 2010

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One thing I really hate about winter is the light.  Last year at this time, I was still cooking for my families so if I raced, I could catch a bit of afternoon light and take a decent photo.  These days, I’m never done with cooking dinner until dinnertime at which point it has been dark for hours.  I’ve had to rely on my special light to make photography possible and I sure am tired of the photos all having the same look.  Hence this somewhat different composition today.

Now wait.  Don’t call me a hypocrite.  I know I wrote a post talking about low fat cooking yesterday.  Did you also read that I only do high fat baking?    And boy, this is high fat.  So much so that in the introduction for the recipe, Holly wrote, “This would be a good treat for someone wanting to gain weight.”  Ahem, not really my problem but it’s a nice thought.

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As if it wasn’t enough to have a shortbread base with nuts and chocolate chips strewn over the top, a combination of honey and cream is poured over the whole pan which is then baked until golden brown.  The result is similar to an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie but denser and, thanks to the honey, sweeter.  I love honey, so for me the flavor was welcome here.

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One Year Ago: Milk Chocolate Layer Cake

Oatmeal Carmelitas
With Love & Butter
18 big bars

1½ cups (3 sticks) butter, at room temperature
2/3 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
2 cups flour
2 cups oats (quick or old-fashioned)
1 tsp. baking soda
¼ tsp. salt
1½ cups chocolate chips
½ cup coarsely chopped walnuts (DT: I used pecans)
1 cup honey
½ cup half-and-half (DT: I used cream)

Preheat oven to 375° with the rack in the center position.  Butter a 9×13-inch baking pan.

Cream the butter and brown sugar together with an electric mixer.  Add the flour, oats, baking soda, and salt and combine.  Reserve 1/3 of the dough.  Press the remaining dough evenly into the buttered baking pan.  Bake for 5 minutes, rotate the pan, and bake 5 to 10 minutes longer.  The crust should be barely brown.  Leave the oven on.

Scatter the chocolate chips and walnuts over the hot crust.  Now blob the reserved dough as evenly as you can on top of the chocolate and nuts.

Combine the honey and half-and-half.  Heat in the microwave or on the stove until hot but not boiling.  Pour the honey cream sauce over the dough and bake 15 to 20 minutes.  The bars will be done when they turn a uniformly rich golden color.  Cool and cut.


Category: Bars, Chocolate, Holly B's
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Apple Pie Bars

October 30, 2009

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Sometimes you need a lot of treats.  Maybe you are having a big party or have a weekend’s worth of events coming up and want to bring something to each one.  Or perhaps you are incredibly well-organized and want to stock your freezer full for the family that is coming over the holidays, plus still have something to give to your kids’ teachers.

If any of the above fits you, I would advise you to make these Apple Pie Bars.  If you like the look of them but don’t know what you would do with 48 of them, I would not advise you to make them.  I made them for last weekend’s yoga retreat and I only brought about half of them and then only about half of them got eaten.  I felt like everywhere I looked in my life there were apple pie bars.  They were like little bunnies, just multiplying and multiplying.

This is not to take anything away from what is a really lovely treat.  It’s really like a slice of apple pie but in pick-up-and-eat bar form.  Aside from the task of peeling and slicing 12 apples, it’s not a lot of work for a lot of bars.  I didn’t freeze mine, but the recipe says you can and wouldn’t it be nice to have a big batch to pull from now and then?  The recipe also says you can make them up to four days ahead and keep them at room temperature but I will tell you that the crust gets a little soggy after a day or two.  No flavor is compromised, just not as crisp.

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One Year Ago:  Zucchini Soup

Apple Pie Bars
Adapted from Food and Wine
Makes 48 large bars

Whenever I bake with apples, I almost always use Granny Smith.  They are readily available and while they are not what I would choose to eat out of hand, they are wonderful for baking.  I like that they keep their structure more than other apples (i.e. don’t become mush) and I also like that they are on the tart side.  To me, apple desserts should have some play on sweet and sour.

Crust
3 sticks unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
3 cups flour
1/2 tsp. kosher salt

Filling
6 tbsp. unsalted butter
1/2 cup light brown sugar
12 Granny Smith apples (about 6 pounds) – peeled, cored and thinly sliced
1 tbsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
1 cup water, as necessary

Topping
3/4 cup walnuts
3 cups quick-cooking oats
2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups light brown sugar
1 1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
3 sticks unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes and chilled

1.  Make the crust.  Preheat the oven to 375°F.  Line a 15-by-17-inch rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.  In a standing electric mixer fitted with a paddle, beat the butter with the sugar at medium speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.  At low speed, beat in the flour and salt until a soft dough forms.  Press the dough over the bottom of the prepared pan and 1/2 inch up the side in an even layer.  Bake in the center of the oven for about 20 minutes, until the crust is golden and set.  Let cool on a rack.

2.  Meanwhile, make the filling.  In each of 2 large skillets, melt 3 tablespoons of the butter with 1/2 cup of the light brown sugar.  Add the apples to the skillets and cook over high heat, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 10 minutes.  Stir half of the cinnamon and nutmeg into each skillet.  Cook until the apples are caramelized and very tender and the liquid is evaporated, about 10 minutes longer; scrape up any bits stuck to the bottom of the skillet and add up to 1/2 cup of water to each pan to prevent scorching.

3.  Make the topping.  Spread the walnuts in a pie plate and toast until golden and fragrant, about 8minutes.  Let cool, then coarsely chop the walnuts.  In a large bowl, mix the oats with the flour, light brown sugar, cinnamon, baking soda and salt.  Using a pastry blender or two knives, cut in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse meal.  Stir in the walnuts and press the mixture into clumps.

4.  Spread the apple filling over the crust.  scatter the crumbs on top, pressing them lightly into an even layer.  Bake in the center of the oven for 1 hour, until the topping is golden; rotate the pan halfway through baking.  Let cool completely on a rack before cutting into 2-inch bars.

Make ahead: The bars can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for 4 days or frozen for a month.


Category: Baked Goods, Bars, Dessert, Pie, Seasonal, Yoga Retreat Food
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Brownie Wars

October 22, 2009

Brownie Collage

Let’s get right down to business.  Are you cakey or fudgy?  Don’t laugh – it’s an important question.  Well, some people think it’s important.  Some people are downright militant about their brownie preferences.  Me?  My brownie preference is “Yes, please.”

Some recipes I find and then have absolutely no problem telling myself it is the definititive fill-in-the-blank recipe.  Challah for example.  I made some of that gorgeous egg bread this week for a lunch party on Saturday and, as I was braiding the dough, I realized that I have never ever been tempted to find another challah recipe.  Why mess with perfection?  Years ago when I found an über-fudgy brownie recipe, I thought it was the be-all end-all and would be my brownie recipe forever.  But I have strayed.  I’ve made Mexican browines, Ina Garten’s Outrageous Brownies and just recently, I made the Baked cookbook version.

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Now, this is not an apples to apples comparison.  I made the Baked version in a 15×10 pan rather than a 13×9 knowing full well that they would turn out flatter.  After having a few things from that cookbook turn out sub-par, I was really pleased with the brownies.  Cakey but not dry and with terrific chocolate flavor.  Not overly rich and just about perfect when topped with homemade honey lavender ice cream and leftover almond praline from Holly B’s scones.

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My old stand-by (which is from Bon Appetit) I did make in an 13×9 pan and they were as close to a large piece of fudge as I remember.  They are gooey, not from being underbaked, but just from the amount of butter and chocolate in there (with very little flour).   If you want fudge masquerading as a brownie, this is the recipe to try.

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If I were a food scientist or Alton Brown, I could tell you precisely why these recipes turn out so differently.  Although they are both brownies and the method is similar, the ingredient list and the proportions of those ingredients are very different.  But ultimately food science is not why you read Dana Treat is it?  I’m here to tell you my personal opinion.  My next pan of brownies will be from the Baked cookbook.  Why?  Because they are what I think of when I want a brownie.  In other words, perfect.

One Year Ago:  Soba Noodles with Tofu and Bok Choy

The Baked Brownie
Baked – New Frontiers in Baking
Makes 24 brownies

If you like the idea of a flat brownie, make them in a 15-by-10 inch pan, or what is often called a jelly roll pan.  If you want them thicker, use the 13-by-9 called for in the recipe.

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. dark unsweetened cocoa powder
11 ounces dark chocolate (60 to 72% cacao), coarsely chopped
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 tsp. instant espresso powder
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
5 large eggs, at room temperature
2 tsp. pure vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350°F.  Butter the sides and bottom of a 9-by-13 inch glass or light-colored metal baking pan.

Put the chocolate, butter, and instant espresso powder in a large bowl and set it over a saucepan of simmering water, stirring occasionally, until the chocolate and butter are completely melted and smooth.  Turn off the heat, but keep the bowl over the water and add the sugars.  Whisk until completely combined, then remove the bowl from the pan.  The mixture should be room temperature.

Add 3 eggs to the chocolate mixture and whisk until combined.  Add the remaining eggs and whisk until combined.  Add the vanilla and stir until combined.  Do not overbeat the batter at this stage or your brownies will be too cakey.

Sprinkle the flour mixture over the chocolate mixture.  Using a spatula (not a whisk), fold the flour mixture into the chocolate until just a bit of the flour mixture is visible.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top.  Bake in the center of the oven for 30 minutes, rotating the pan half way through the baking time, until a toothpick inserted into the center of the brownies comes out with a few moist crumbs sticking to it.  Let the brownies cool completely, then cut them into squares and serve.

Tightly covered with plastic wrap, the brownies keep at room temperature for up to 3 days.

Chocolate Brownies
Adapted from Bon Appetit
Makes 24 brownies

I cut back the amount of sugar in here from 3 cups to 2 1/2.

3 sticks unsalted butter, cut into pieces
12 oz fine-quality bittersweet chocolate, chopped
6 large eggs
1 1/4 cups cake flour
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch process)
2 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 tsp. salt

Preheat the oven to 350°F.  Butter and flour a 13-by-9 inch metal baking pan, knocking out excess flour.

Melt butter with chocolate in a large metal bowl set over a saucepan of barely simmering water, stirring until smooth.  Remove bowl from pan and whisk in eggs, 1 at a time.  Sift together flour and cocoa powder in a separate bowl and stir into batter with sugar and salt.

Pour batter into pan and bake in middle of oven until top is firm and a tester inserted into the center comes out with crumbs adhering, 35-40 minutes.  Cool completely in pan on a rack before cutting into squares.


Category: Bars, Chocolate, Dessert
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Holly B’s Cappucino Bars

October 14, 2009

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(Thank you to all of you who have entered my giveaway!  I will announce a winner tomorrow.)

Have you heard that expression “small but mighty”?  When I hear it, the first thing I think of is my younger son.  He is actually quite big for his age but considering that age is only 2 1/2 he is still small, all things considered.  But oh, is he mighty.  I wouldn’t say he has the terrible two’s though.  I would just say that he is a force to be reckoned with.  Most of the time he is very agreeable, cheerful and funny.  But if he doesn’t get, say, a lollipop like his brother because he didn’t finish his lunch…watch out.  He threw such a fit that I had to take him outside and even then people were staring across the street.  Small but mighty.

On a visit to Holly B’s Bakery, you will find lots of large treats.  The slices of pizza are huge, the cinnamon rolls are generous, even the cookies are big.  These Cappucino Bars are not.  They are slender and delicate looking but they pack a flavor punch.  The combination of coffee, chocolate, and just a bit of cinnamon here is intoxicating.  In spite of the title, the coffee flavor here is fairly subtle so even my coffee hating husband thinks they are delicious.

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To buy the Holly B’s cookbook, please visit this site.

One Year Ago:  Quick Olive and Cheese Bread and White Beans with Tomatoes and Sage

Cappucino Bars
With Love & Butter
32 bars

To get really flat bars, I find it works best to smooth them over with an offset spatula, using gentle pressure, just after they come out of the oven and before you apply the glaze.

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, at room temperature
1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1 tbsp. instant coffee or espresso powder (not granules)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Glaze
2 tbsp. milk
1 tbsp. butter
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1/4 tsp. cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 375 F with the rack at the middle level.  Line a 10×15 inch pan with baking parchment or grease lightly.  (DT: This is also called a jelly roll pan.)

Cream together the butter, brown sugar, instant coffee, and vanilla.  Blend in the flour, baking poser, and salt.  Last, stir in the chocolate chips by hand.  The mixture will be very crumbly, with barely enough dough to hold together the chocolate chips.

Use your fingers, palms, and heels of your hands to press the dough evenly into the pan.  If necessary, cover the dough with wax or parchment paper and use a small rolling pin to flatten the lumps.  Bake 5 minutes, rotate the pan, and  bake 5 to 10 minutes more or until the edges are just starting to brown (watch carefully).  Cool in the pan 5 minutes before spreading with glaze.

Put all the ingredients for the glaze in a small saucepan on medium heat.  Don’t leave this stuff!  Find a whisk and stir until smooth and barely bubbly.  Drizzle the glaze evenly over the bars and smooth out to the edges and corners with a rubber spatula.

Cool until the pan is just warm to the touch and cut into bars with a sharp knife.  (Holly recommends cutting 8 on the 10-inch side and 4 on the 15-inch side, equaling 32 candy-bar sized cookies.  You can halve them too.)


Category: Bars, Cookies, Dessert, Holly B's
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