Bake 52 Week 35: Crunchy Granola Bars

This week we had Crunchy Granola bars for our baking group.  Another quick recipe.  It would have been delish except I burnt the oats when I was browning them.  It was just barely but it stunk up the house (almost like burnt popcorn).  I knew the oats were a bit burnt but I was already making a half a batch because I didn't have enough old fashion oats for a full batch so...

I covered them in chocolate!!

It made them edible but you could still taste that the flavor was off.  But they were very crispy, sweet and I think might even be better without the chocolate (gasp! I can't believe I even thought that, let alone wrote it...)

I couldn't get the chocolate to firm up at room temperature...80 degrees is a bit too warm for melted chocolate to solidify very quickly.  I had to stick them in the frig.

For the full recipe check out Emily's blog. 



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Bake 52, Week 34 - Glazed Lemon Cookies

I'm late with this... vacation always throws me off.  But I was pretty sure these would be a bit hit with Jonathan so I had to make them.  I was right... Jonathan loves them and he won't let me take them to work because he wants them all to himself! 

These were super easy with all the mixing happening in my food processor.  Check out the lemon sugar - yum. 

I couldn't resist measuring my log of cookie dough.  It was almost long enough... good enough.

After letting the dough chill for a couple of hours you just cut the cookies off the log and bake them for about 16 minutes.

After letting them cool, I topped them with a lemon/cream cheese glaze and...

Yummy, yummy lemon cookies!  For the recipe check out Michelle's blog. 

Bake 52 Week 33 - Raspberry Streusel Bars

This week we got to make a simple dessert bar.  I substituted strawberries for raspberries so I really made Strawberry Streusel bars.

I set out the butter the night before so it would be softened for the recipe.  Look at that picture below...  it's nearly melted butter!  Crazy heat.  We hit 111 the day I made this.

 After mixing up the dough I pressed it into the prepared pan and tossed it in the oven. 

Then I took the reserved crust and added the brown sugar, pecans and other yummy stuff to make the strusel. 

 The crust cooked up nicely.  Once it was out of the oven I just spread the strawberries, strawberry jam (actually jelly) and lemon juice mix over the hot crust. 

 Then I sprinkled the strusel over the top and tossed it back in the oven. 

 After 25 minutes in the oven it was bubbly, hot and crisp. 

 The next morning I pulled it out of the pan - the aluminum foil sling worked great! - and cut them into bars.

I always end up having one (or more) before I finish cutting the dessert.  No self-control!

The streusel bars tasted a little like toast with butter and jam.  The streusel and the crust were both really buttery.  I wasn't too impressed with the flavor - it thought the streusel needed more sugar...:-)

For the full recipe check out Jennifer's blog. 

Brown Sugar Bars

This was my second dessert from the weekend.  It wasn't like anything I've ever had before.  I got the recipe from here and it wouldn't normally be something that I would be attracted to try.  But the blog entry really talked up how amazing they were, so...

The recipe really wants to make sure you can get the dessert out of the pan easily.  I had to grease the pan, put in parchment paper and then butter and flour that! 

The dough tasted a lot like chocolate chip cookie dough without the chocolate chips. 

The dough was incredibly stiff.  It took quite a bit of work/time to get it spread out across the whole pan. 

Then after it baked I got this weirdness happening...

But you cut it in half and make a sandwich with it so I didn't care too much what it looked like. 

The ganach was super easy, took no time at all for the cream to come to a boil and then the chocolate melted easily as I mixed in the cream.  I let it sit to set up a bit before moving on to making the bars. 

See the underside looked fine.  So I cut it in half and flipped it over to spread the ganach on half.

Look how thick the ganach is!!  Yummy!

These bars were tasty but nothing like I was expecting after the build up from Mel.  But they were good and I think it's something anyone would like.  The brown sugar "cake" really tasted like brown sugar and the chocolate really complimented it.  I think maybe I'd like it better with more chocolate - big surprise.  But it wasn't so good I have to make it again. 

Buckeye Peanut Butter Balls

Last week for our baking group we made Cheddar Cheese Bread - a very yummy easy, quick bread.  But not a sweet.  Since I can't seem to get through a weekend without making something sweet I made these (and a second dish because I couldn't settle on one!).  I got the recipe from here.  It's very straight forward.  As usual the hardest part for me was forming something that looked like actual balls.  Look at all the weird, different shapes I ended up with!

After letting the balls freeze for ten minutes I rolled or dipped them in the chocolate.  Now that I've eaten about half of the batch in the past four days (I'm scared to step on the scale and see the damage I've done) I've decided I like them better rolled in chocolate.  The creamy peanut butter needs some firm semi-sweet chocolate to offset it. 

When I was done with the Peanut Butter balls I had left over chocolate so I made some marshmallow clusters. 

I put everything in the freezer and have stored them there ever since.  The chocolate marshmallows were really tasty right out of the freezer.  They had the same consistency of really stale marshmallows (which I love!).  The Peanut butter balls had to stay in the freezer because with an 80 degree house they get soft and the chocolate melts way too fast! 

If you love peanut butter these are worth making!

Bake 52 Week 32 - Cheddar Cheese Bread

This week we made Cheddar Cheese Bread. It's a quick bread so it was really easy to make. It's really flavorful! You start with a layer of shredded parmesan cheese on the bottom.

Then you mix the chopped cheddar cheese with the dry ingredients.

Mix the wet ingredients.

Then mix the wet and dry ingredients together.  It took a bit of work to get all the dry ingredients incorporated.  It's a really stiff dough.  Once I got everything mixed together I loaded it into a greased bread pan and topped it with more Parmesan cheese.

Already to bake.  Fifty minutes later...

Yum!  I let it cool for 10 minutes in the pan and then an hour before I cut into it. 

It was really tasty.  The bread on it's own was a bit...I don't know the right word...rich, creamy, heavy, dense?  Jonathan said it needed butter.  When I asked Jonathan if he liked it he said he likes bread that he can toast and put strawberry jam on.  I don't know about toasting it but...

Strawberry jam was a great idea!  It balanced out the heavy/dense/richness and really compliments the cheddar cheese.  I really like this bread.  To get the full recipe check out Betsy's blog.



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Bake 52 Week 31: Monkey Bread

I didn't take many pictures this time.  The dough we used for this recipe is the same as the dough we used for the cinnamon rolls a couple of weeks ago.  It's very easy to pull together.  I made the whole dish the day before and then just cooked it the morning I wanted to have it for breakfast.  My biggest issue was dividing the dough into 36 equal pieces...  I finally just squished the dough out into a bit of a tube and then divided the sections in half until I had 36 pieces.

They didn't turn out that equal because I didn't want to mash the dough to much to get a uniform tube.  It was also kind of weird rolling the dough into balls.  Because all the pieces were already kind of cylindrical they seemed to want not want to roll up, they just kind of folded over.  But after several times I found that if I rolled the dough in my hands until it was fairly dense and then kept rolling the cyclinder started to twist itself into a small ball. 

I covered the whole dish with pastic wrap and left it in the fridge overnight.  When I got up the next morning I pulled it right out and let it sit for almost an hour and a half while I went running.  To my surprise it didn't seem to rise anymore than what it had already done in the frig while it was sitting a room temperature.

After 40 minutes in the oven I had beautiful, warm, sweet Monkey Bread.

My parents were visiting me so I had taken the day off work to spend with them.  In honor of their visit I made a big breakfast including this bread. 

It was fun to have a few people to cook for!

For the full recipe check out Jenn's blog.