Lingonberry Oat Crumble Bars

I made these lingonberry bars a couple months ago. They are great - buttery with a little chew and not too sweet. I used lingonberry jam that I purchased at Ikea, but raspberries or anothet tart jam or fruit would work really well. Even a cranberry compote would work (or how about cranberry and marmalade? now I want to make that....)

I got the recipe from this great blog "17 and Baking". She's pretty impressive! I definitely wasn't such an ambitious baker at her age (she's in college now).

I added some coconut and walnuts to these but otherwise stuck pretty close to the recipe:

http://17andbaking.com/2012/02/07/raspberry-oat-crumble-bars/

Cookie Crisp Pretzel Bars

Remember when I made my "milk & cookies" cupcake a couple weeks ago? I bought a whole box of Cookie Crisp cereal but only used a few for the "cookie" toppers. Well, I've been trying to figure out what to do with the remainder of the box. If it was Cinnamon Toast Crunch or even Cap'n Crunch I would just pour some milk in the box and eat it up! Sadly, Cookie Crisp has either gotten more bland since I was a kid or my palate is more refined.

Anyway, I made these bars and added pretzels and chocolate chips to offset the sweetness of the cereal.

• I  browned my butter before adding my marshmallows (to add some deeper, nutty flavors) but you could just melt the butter in the regular way.
• I crushed up my cereal and pretzels in a food processor but you could also put them in a big plastic bag (or even between two pieces of plastic wrap) and crush them with rolling pin. You want pieces that are, oh, roughly the size of a pencil eraser or maybe a little bigger.

Recipe:

Ingredients

1 1/2 sticks of butter
40 marshmallows (1 package)
4 cups cookie crisp cereal (crushed into pieces)
1 cup pretzels (crushed into pieces)
1/2 cup chocolate chips

1. Use cooking spray, an oiled paper towel, or a pat of butter to grease a 13"x9" pan (you can use a different size but, obviously, this will affect the thickness of your treats). Set aside.
2. Place cereal and pretzel mixture together in a heat safe mixing bowl. Set aside.
3. Melt butter in a medium to large pot. If you are going to brown the butter, keep it on the heat (stirring occasionally) until it starts turning a light brown color. If not, just heat butter until completely melted.
4. Add marshmallows and stir until butter and marshmallows melt together completely. It may be necessary to stir vigorously or "fold" the two together to make sure there are no pockets of butter remaining.
5. Pour the marshmallow/butter mixture into the cereal/pretzel mixture and stir vigorously to combine. Work quickly to make sure there are no dry pockets of cereal. This way you'll get nice consistency in your final product.
6. Quickly pour the mixture into the prepared pan. Press down with a rubber spatula or a wooden spoon. Spraying the spatula with cooking spray makes it easier to get the mixture out of the bowl and to press it into the pan without it sticking to the utensil.
7. Sprinkle the chocolate chips on top while the bars are still warm. I pressed them down a little with my spatula to make sure they stick.
8. Cool until set. I cute mine with a bench knife/scraper but any sturdy knife will work. Keep covered in an airtight container.

Lemon Bars (from Martha)

This was my first time making lemon bars! It's actually quite easy. The crust is a shortbread-type crust that you really can't screw up. The lemony part is just a mix-and-pour type deal. I followed the recipe on Martha's site exactly except I used regular butter for the crust instead of brown butter and I used vanilla sugar instead of regular sugar. It is definitely worth the trouble to squeeze your own lemons rather than using a bottled lemon juice. The bottled kind always has a weird metallic quality to it. The lemon is the star here!

Delicious!

http://www.marthastewart.com/859428/lemon-bars-brown-butter-shortbread-crust

What's for Dessert?

Unfortunately, I'm not making too many desserts lately. It's sad because I enjoy baking and other desserts but, as I mentioned, we're trying to eat better around these parts. The pic above is the berry crisp I made from black raspberries, rhubarb and strawberries. The crisp topping is mostly oats with a little butter, sugar, and flour. Bake at 350 until the top is browned and the fruit is bubbling.

The above is a lazy way to assemble a crepe, I will admit. Melanie had just made a fresh batch and I didn't feel like rolling them up neatly.

This last one really isn't a healthy dessert. I mean, I guess it has oats and nuts in it. Does that count? I took the standard Tollhouse cookie bar recipe and made some substitutions. I used a 1/4 cup of oats to replace some of the flour. I also had three half bags of chips to use up (butterscotch, peanut butter, mini-chocolate chips. Am I the only one who ends up with these pathetic half or quarter bags of random chips?) and used half almonds/half walnuts instead of the pecans listed. Oh yeah - I also threw in half a bar of semisweet chocolate (a baking bar size, chopped). The end result was very good but I think the butterscotch chips made them a little sweeter than I would have liked.