Granola Bars: Finally, a Winner!!

I have made what seems like endless granola bars, searching for the perfect combination of taste and texture...  usually the recipes are good in one department and not so much in the other.   This recipe, though, is a winner on both counts.  Chewy and crunchy (not too sticky or crumbly), sweet, salty and nutty.  Mmmm.  Thanks, Ina.

I made them last minute (hence the blurry airport cell phone pic) as a travel snack for our looooong one taxi-two flights-one car-two boats journey to Bunaken... good stuff.

Maple Coconut Granola

While in the U.S., I picked up a copy of the new cookbook from Deb Perelman (the blogger behind my go-to recipe source, Smitten Kitchen)... good stuff!  Her photos are beautiful and the recipes look like they stay true to her trusty simple/easy/beautiful style.

 

Tim and I are trying to make morning workouts and breakfast more of a priority in the new year (especially after recently overindulging in all of the things we rarely get here, including pork products and good booze), so I am on the hunt for fun and healthy breakfast options.  Deb's book had just such an offering: homemade maple granola.  Yum. Paired with tart yogurt, fresh passionfruit (markisa here in Indonesia) and a banana, it's a pretty healthy and satisfying breakfast.

The recipe doesn't require anything too crazy... oats, dried coconut (unsweetened), maple syrup, wheat germ, walnuts, a hint of cinnamon.  It uses an egg white to stick everything together and achieve the large clumps/clusters that Deb was striving for.... somehow that didn't work out for me, but I think perhaps my Indonesian eggs are smaller than the typical American egg.  Alternatively, it may be because I overloaded my mini baking sheet in my mini oven.  In any case, I did not get clusters, but I'm not too worried about it because it tastes great- crunchy, nutty and a little sweet.

Leftover Cranberry Sauce?

Got leftover cranberry sauce?  If so, make these cranberry crumble bars.  Super easy and quite a big hit at the Thanksgiving party we went to in Jakarta...  they went slowly at first, but at the end of the party, as we were leaving, I had at least 6 people pull me over and tell me they were awesome.  Pretty ringing endorsement.

I used this cranberry crumble bar recipe from the November issue of Martha Stewart Living, which conveniently arrived here in Jakarta the day before Thanksgiving.  The recipe looked pretty easy and delicious, but I had to make a few changes out of necessity:

• First, a 9"x13" pan doesn't fit in my mini oven, so I decided to switch up the pans.  I went with my removeable bottom tart pan so I would end up with pie-shaped bars... I split the dough recipe into 2 and made 2 tarts, each cooked for 30 minutes. 
• I probably used 1 and a half cans of cranberry sauce between the 2 tarts, though.  
• Also, I substituted toasted, slivered almonds for the walnuts, which I couldn't find for some reason (the Real Martha thinks there is a walnut shortage of some sort this year- she says prices of walnuts have skyrocketed of late).

 

Granola Bars, Take 2

After my success with granola bars last week, Tim requested that I make some more, but with peanut butter.  I made mine based on a different recipe, one that didn't involve cooking the bars after forming them.

 

The end result was quite tasty- I like the flavor of these much better than last week.  The consistency was much softer... more like Rice Krispie treats.  Thumbs up, except that they crumbled somewhat when handled.

I used the same technique as the recipe, but switched up the ingredients a bit:

1 cup oatmeal (mine wasn't instant, so I toasted in the oven for about 10 minutes)

1 cup Rice Krispies

1/2 cup slivered almonds (toasted along with the oatmeal)

1/4 cup toasted wheat germ

1/2 cup chocolate chips

1/4 cup honey

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup peanut butter

Heated the honey and brown sugar together until the sugar dissolved, then added peanut butter.  Tossed together all of the dry ingredients and poured the peanut butter sauce over the top.  Pressed it all into a lightly greased 9" x 9" pan.  Cooled, cut and ate!

Granola Bars

Granola bars are one of those funny things here in Jakarta.  You can get them, sure, but you will pay an arm and a leg.  And your brand and flavor options are limited, too.  I wouldn't call myself a granola bar connoisseur or anything, but I like to have them on hand for a quick breakfast or snack to take hiking or biking, so this situation is somewhat frustrating.

I wondered if I could make my own and whether they would taste as good as (or hopefully better than) the store bought ones.  I'm not quite sure that this recipe achieves any sort of economical success for me, as the ingredients for making the homemade version are not particularly cheap here, either, but the flavor is pretty nice! 

I made my version basically based on Alton Brown's recipe... I used whole almonds (which I then chopped), roasted and salted sunflower seeds, regular brown sugar, and raisins.  Also, I threw in some chocolate chips when stirring the dry and wet ingredients together... the chips melted throughout so the whole bar has a chocolate-y flavor.  Maybe next time I'll try adding some peanut butter?

Individual Peach Cobblers

A couple weeks ago Tim came home from work with some super fresh and ripe local peaches. We ate most of them straight up as a snack, but eventually there were two of them still sitting there, getting a little wrinkly and begging to be mixed with butter and sugar and turned into dessert. Luckily for us, Joy the Baker had just posted this cute recipe for Peach Cobbler for One...

Joy's topping recipe is really delicious- a little body from the oatmeal, unexpected tropical flavor from the coconut, lots of butter and sugar.  

Since we had 2 peaches, I doubled the topping recipe. This may have been an unnecessary step. I never thought I'd say this, but there was actually too much topping. 

What?! 

Yes, too much topping. 

I think I could have done one topping recipe and split it among the 2 peaches...

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

I went to the beach for an early spring ladies' getaway, so I needed to bake a quick sweet treat to bring with me.
These peanut butter and oatmeal cookies with chocolate chips fit the bill: sweet, peanuty, rich, super simple.

Crack Pie!!

So, the internets are all atwitter about the tasty baked goods from Momofuku Milk Bar in NYC, particularly their Crack pie (no, not named for a particularly craggy appearance or anything, but because it's addictive like crack). The LA Times had an article about the Crack Pie and posted a recipe, and since then, many a blogger has tried their hand at manufacturing this crack in pie form.The recipe has several steps, but none of them are particularly difficult. Basically you bake a giant oatmeal cookie, then crumble it with sugar, butter and salt to make the tasty crust, and finally fill it with a ton of sin (melted butter, egg yolks, brown and white sugar, and some vanilla) and bake.

The end result is a gooey, sweet, salty, delicious mess. I brought it to a BBQ and it was gone in seconds as people basically inhaled it straight from the pie plate. It was like hyenas fighting over freshly killed wildebeest or something.

The recipe makes 2 pies- I did one in a pie plate and the other in a removable bottom tart pan. The tart pan made it a little easier to get the slices out.

Pecan Coconut Tart

I over-bought shredded coconut back when we were making Christmas cookies, so I was trying to come up with a way to use it up- this recipe looked interesting and had a lot of good reviews on epicurious, so we gave it a try.The recipe was pretty good- it seems like a cross between a pecan pie, a granola bar, a 7-layer bar. It's oaty, nutty, and caramely. Like some of the other recipe reviewers said, maybe I wouldn't cook the crust quite as long since it gets a second bake with the filling.

Peanut Butter Granola Bars

So I've wanted to make my own granola bars for a while, preferably peanut butter ones. Lots of recipes I looked up had corn syrup in them, which sorta defeated the purpose of making my own as opposed to buying the ones in the grocery store with all of the extra crap and preservatives in them.

This recipe from Giada DeLaurentis looked decent, and it was... but I wouldn't really call it a granola bar. It was more of a soft, crumbly, sweet bar cookie, as opposed to a crispy, crunchy, slightly sweet granola bar. Tasty, but not what I was looking for.

The search continues!!!

No-Bake Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chewies

Chuck and I decided to taste-test a cookie we were considering making as part of our Christmas cookie experiment... we thought this one looked good because it combined peanut butter and chocolate and was a no-bake, so we figured we could make it at the same time as another cookie and not have them compete for oven time and space.

This cookie is perfectly easy. Perfect to satisfy a random weeknight chocolate craving, for sure.

Alas, it's not quite perfect for our purposes... not what we were looking for in a Christmas cookie. Too soft in consistency and not pretty enough to stand up to the other, flashier cookies we're planning to make.

Happy Birthday, Chuckie!

When she was little, Chuckie had an obsession with those Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies... so we re-created them for her birthday, in lieu of a birthday cake. And by "we," I mean Tony baked them on his day off while I provided moral support to him over IM from my cube at work. He's a novice baker, but after a few minor missteps, he was victorious in the end. And now he knows what "cream" means in the baking context... and knowing is half the battle.

Using a recipe I found on a blog, they came out pretty close to the original- soft oatmeal cookies with a gooey marshmallow frosting on the inside. I think maybe if we were to make them again, we would try to use less sugar... they were borderline cloyingly sweet. But tasty nonetheless.