Archive for the ‘Cookies – Bar Cookies and Brownies’ Category
You won’t find too many bar cookies out there that look as festive as these Cranberry and Pistachio Squares. These bar cookies are studded with bright green pistachio nuts and are bursting with whole, red cranberries. On the lightly colored cookie background, the red and green pop out vividly – and that will definitely make you want to reach out and grab a square for a taste.
The bars look similar to blondies, but are much more tender than your average blondie is. They’re soft and a little bit crumbly, with a thin, crisp topping of coarse sugar. Whole cranberries – you can use fresh or frozen – are coarsely chopped and added into the bars. They are not only brightly colored, but their bright and tangy flavor comes through clearly. It also makes the bars seem very fresh and really makes them stand out from bar cookies that only use dried cranberries. Pistachios are incorporated into the dough alongside the cranberries and a few of them are also sprinkled on top to add some texture.
I prefer using lightly salted pistachios for this recipe because it adds just a hint of saltiness to the topping of these squares (you will not notice any extra salt in the bars themselves). It’s a nice contrast to the coarse sugar that is also sprinkled on top. I also happen to prefer eating lightly salted pistachios. If you prefer unsalted, they will work just as well in the recipe and you will still get bars with a delicious combination of cranberries and pistachios.
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Apple Cider Butter is one of my favorite fall treats to make. Apple butter is a fruit preserve made by cooking fresh apples with sugar and apple cider and reducing it into a thick rich spread. It is fairly easy to make and well worth the time, as the butter can be put to many good uses in the kitchen (and packaged in jars for gifts). My favorite way to eat it is on top of buttered toast or homemade biscuits, but I’ve baked it into Apple Butter Pie and these Apple Butter Bars are high on the list, too.
Apple Butter Bars are moist, cake-like bar cookies that are made with a generous amount of apple butter in the batter. The intense apple flavor of the preserve gives the finished bars a wonderful apple flavor, which is enhanced with just a hint of cinnamon, ginger and allspice. The bars are baked in a jelly-roll pan, so they turn out to be fairly thin, but are still moist, tender and perfect for snacking.
I used my homemade Apple Cider Butter in this recipe, and I definitely recommend giving that recipe a try to use as a base for this one. If you don’t make your own, apple butter is available in many grocery stores (Smuckers makes a great one) in the fall and winter. Applesauce can make a good substitution, but it doesn’t have the depth of flavor that apple butter does and it doesn’t have additional sugar (even sweetened brands won’t be as sweet as apple butter is). This means that bars made with applesauce instead of apple butter will be much milder, although they will still be tasty, so I recommend adding more spice to liven up your bars if you choose to use applesauce in them.
These bars can be eaten plain or with a dusting of powdered sugar. I usually take the powdered sugar route, personally, but this time around I added a drizzle of vanilla glaze to add a little extra sweetness and dress them up a bit. The bars keep well for several days when stored in an airtight container.
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Fall puts me in the mood for pumpkin desserts and an extra bag of Pumpkin Spice Marshmallows in my kitchen put me in the mood to make some pumpkin spice cereal bars. Homemade rice krispy treats were always a favorite of mine growing up, but it wasn’t until recently that I started to put some new flavor spins on them, such as Black and White Rice Krispy Treats and Peanut Butter Cup Rice Krispy Bars. This time around, I opted to turn that bag of fall spice marshmallows into a batch of Pumpkin Pie Rice Krispie Treats.
To create these bars, I made a graham cracker crust and then put a batch of Rice Krispy treats made with the Pumpkin Spice Marshmallows on top. I like pumpkin pies with a crisp graham cracker crust, so adding that element to this cereal treat version was a logical step. The graham crackers added a whole new layer of flavor (literally!) and also captured the full flavor of a slice of pumpkin pie. The crust needs to be completely cool before you add the cereal treat mixture to allow the marshmallow to stick to it. To avoid breaking up the crust as you add the cereal layer, try to distribute the warm cereal treat mixture evenly and press it into place, rather than trying to spread it over the crust.
Adding the graham cracker crust is what gives these an actual pumpkin pie flavor, as opposed to just a spicy one.
In addition to the batch of these that I made using the Pumpkin Spice Marshmallows, I also made a batch using regular spices. The spice-only version does not require any special edition marshmallows (you’ll still need regular marshmallows) and uses cinnamon, ginger and cloves to add a spicy flavor. It doesn’t have quite the same color as the store bought spice marshmallow bars do, but it has a great flavor and still turns regular cereal bars into a fall treat. These bars keep very well for several days when stored in an airtight container.
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Cheesecake swirled brownies are one of my favorite types of brownies. That isn’t to say that a fudgy, rich chocolaty brownie can’t stand on its own – but there is something special about it when it is topped off with a layer of creamy cheesecake. Cream cheese adds a slightly tangy note to the dessert that makes the brownies seem even darker and more chocolatey than before. Typically, I use a plain vanilla cheesecake topping for cheesecake brownies, but I’ve made a few flavor variations in the past. This one is for chocolate lovers.
Chocolate Cheesecake Brownies are fudgy brownies topped off with a layer of chocolate cheesecake. They don’t have the same visual impact as the classic black and white cheesecake brownies do, but they make up for that in flavor. The cheesecake is not too sweet, but has a good chocolate flavor to it that contrasts well with the deeper flavor of the brownies. If you want even more chocolate, add some chocolate chips to the cheesecake mixture before layering it on to the brownies.
You can either spread the cheesecake in a layer on top of the brownie batter when making these because the brownie batter is fairly thick and this is not difficult to do. I prefer to dollop the cheesecake mixture onto the brownies and give everything a quick swirl with a knife. It gives the brownies a more attractive look and gives you a little more variety, with some pieces having slightly more brownie and others having slightly more cheesecake.
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Blondies are a great everyday treat to bake. They’re just as easy to make as a batch of chocolate chip cookies, but take much less time because they’re baked in a pan and sliced later, rather than being baked off one by one in multiple batches. The bar cookies also invite experimentation, because there are many flavors that go well in the chewy cookie base. I’ve used everything from chocolate to nuts in my blondies before, and put a spicier spin on these Chewy Walnut, Ginger and Toffee Blondies with some candied ginger.
Candied ginger is a great ingredient to work with in baking because it has a sharp, spicy sweetness and a hint of crunchiness from the sugar on the exterior of the ginger. The flavor is bright and bold, and if you buy larger pieces of ginger and chop them up yourself, you have a lot of control over how big of an impact the spicy ginger will have in your baking. Here, I’ve paired the ginger with buttery walnuts and bits of toffee and it is a blend of flavors that works out very well.
The blondies are chewy and have a slightly fudgy, brownie-like quality to them – although, of course, there is no chocolate in this recipe. The fudgy texture comes, in part, from the fact that there is no baking powder or baking soda in this recipe (something common to brownie recipes), so as the sugar caramelizes in the bars it leaves them with a rich, dense texture. The walnuts are crunchy and give the blondies a lot of texture, while the ginger adds a spicy punch and the toffee balances it out.
As with many recipes, I prefer to use toasted and lightly salted walnuts in this recipe. It makes the nuts a little bit more flavorful and gives them a little bit of an extra crunch. It also makes them stand out even more from the sweet toffee and spicy-sweet candied ginger because they introduce a salty element to the bars. That said, unsalted and even untoasted walnuts will still work very well in this recipe, lending a more subtle crunch to the finished blondies but a lot of buttery walnut flavor.
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