bar cookies

skor-daim bar squares

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A Canadian acquaintance requested Skor bar squares to celebrate his birthday when I asked what baked good he might like. Of course, we don’t have Skor bars in Sweden, and the closest approximation is the Daim bar. Also, I have never heard of or made Skor bar squares, so I did an internet search for recipes, hoping that whatever I ended up with would somehow be close to what the acquaintance was hoping for/referring to.

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He said upon having a taste that they were not exactly what he was thinking of but that they were still good. So I put this here hoping maybe someone – anyone? – who reads it might suggest what an actual Skor bar square cookie should be like?

Recipe
Skor (or Daim) bar squares/cookies
1 (11.3 oz) box Ritz crackers
1 (8 oz) bag toffee bits (I used about 225 grams of Daim bars, which I put in the food processor to make bits)
1 (14 oz) can sweetened condensed milk
1 cup milk chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Spray (or butter) an 8×8-inch baking dish with nonstick cooking spray.

Place all of the Ritz crackers in a food processor and process until they are fine crumbs. Pour them into a bowl. Mix one cup of the Daim bits with the Ritz crumbs. Then stir in the can of sweetened condensed milk until well combined.

Press into the prepared baking dish. Bake for 10 minutes, then remove from oven.

Immediately pour the chocolate chips evenly over the top of the bars (I just used broken up milk chocolate bars, as I didn’t have chocolate chips). Allow to sit for a few minutes to melt, then spread evenly over the top. (If they aren’t melting, stick the pan back into the oven for a minute or two – I did this because the pieces of chocolate were a bit thicker than chocolate chips would be – it worked really well.)

Immediately sprinkle the remaining toffee/Daim bits on top. Cool completely before cutting into squares.

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coconut cream bars

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Despite ending my amateur baking activity/fetish/obsession (?), I was still motivated to try something new and experimental (motivated by getting rid of ingredients, that is): coconut cream bars.

I had never made these before so I tried something new. I don’t usually taste-test my own baking (that’s what working in an office full of sugar-hungry people is for!). But in this case, I felt a bit worried, so I put one of these coconut cream bars in my mouth as I was setting up all the baked goods for my office to test. Once I could tell it tasted fine, I spit it out and threw it away. I know. I’m a fucking weirdo.

What I can say is that I think the biggest, best difference about these simple bar cookies is that they are made with brown sugar, which adds more depth and flavor.

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Coconut cream bars
Crust
2 cups flour
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter

Preheat over to 175C. Line a 13″x9″ rectangular pan with parchment.
Mix all ingredients together and press evenly into pan.
Bake 12-15 minutes. Cool 10 minutes.
Reduce oven temperature to 160C.

Coconut cream filling
3 eggs
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup melted butter
3 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 cups coconut

Whisk all ingredients but coconut together. Stir in 3 cups of coconut. Pour over crust and top with remaining one cup of coconut.
Bake 25-30 minutes.

Raspberry walnut swirl cookies

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It’s a good damn thing I am not trying to bake today – all weekend the power at my house has been going on and off, on and off… I don’t quite know what is happening because these are unplanned outages, according to the power company’s website. But it’s not weather-related. It’s still and not stormy (which is what normally knocks the power out).

Anyway things do not always go to plan. That’s kind of the point. I planned some time back to make some raspberry walnut coconut cookies, but the dough was meant to be rolled out, with the filling spread on top and then cut into slices. No. The dough was so crumbly and impossible to roll that it was hopeless.

All is not lost, though, even when things do not go to plan. I pressed about three-quarters of the dough into a pan, spread the raspberry mixture filling on top and sprinkled the rest of the dough on top and baked these into bar cookies. They seem to have worked fine.

Crust
½ cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

Mix together. Press three-quarters of dough into a square 8×8 or 9×9 glass pan.

Filling
¾ cup raspberry jam
½ cup coconut
1/3 cup finely chopped walnuts

Spread filling on crust and sprinkle the remaining one-quarter of dough across the top.

Bake for about 30 minutes. Allow to cool and slice into bars.

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Lemon raspberry bars

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I don’t know what it is but every time I make any form of lemon bar, it always turns out differently. This time, I think the raspberry filling with not thick enough or something, but the bars in the middle of the pan did not firm up and ended up being a big, gooey mess in the middle of the pan, while the edges were perfect. Alas, some of this attempt at lemon raspberry bars could be salvaged.

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June – near Midsummer break – bake

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The latest bake … did not grab pictures of everything but most of the recipes are linked below.

M&M cookies and white chocolate macadamia cookies

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Gluten-free/”paleo” brownies

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Cranberry-pistachio biscotti

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Ginger cookies with pumpkin spice kiss candies

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Cherry oat bars

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Faux thin mint cookies

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Vanilla cupcakes stuffed with Raffaello candy, vanilla frosting

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Cookies and cream cupcakes

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Banana-oat cupcakes stuffed with Smil, frosted with caramel Swiss meringue buttercream

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Brown sugar cupcakes injected with maple syrup, maple Swiss buttercream and candied bacon

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Nanaimo bars

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Lemon raspberry bars

Crack pie with M&Ms

Anzac biscuits

Chocolate truffles

Lemon bar redux

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I can’t count the number of times I have written about lemon bars. The ease of making them originally, the failures of the middle years and finally the adoption of a new recipe to just forge my own lemon bar making path.

Most recently I made some much praised lemon raspberry bars and have chosen to continue using that recipe. Most recently when I made them, I didn’t have raspberries on hand so I skipped that step… but following the recipe otherwise, it all turned out beautifully and the lemon bars were once more one of the most popular things.

lemon bars

lemon bars

Coconut caramel macchiato bars

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Gone in a flash! Coconut caramel macchiato bars

Gone in a flash! Coconut caramel macchiato bars

I found a very simple recipe for coconut caramel macchiato bar cookies a few months ago – and the recipe, seriously, was so dead simple that I thought I would try it out immediately to thrust upon my hungry co-workers. But weeks, even months passed, and I never tried it. Never mind that the “recipe”, if you could even call it that, is an easily whipped-up concoction of pre-made ingredients, so it’s barely even what I would call baking.

Grab a packet of Oreo cookies or some other chocolate cookie you can pulverize into dust and make that into your crust. Get your hands on some dulce de leche – you can make this yourself from a can of sweetened condensed milk, but most brands are available pre-made as dulce de leche caramel. Get some espresso powder (I used Starbucks Via Italian roast). Get some coconut. And you are more or less ready to make these.

I finally got around to making these recently when Mr Firewall visited – a kind of late birthday “cake-like” thing along with thousands of dollars worth (in Oslo or Reykjavik cafe prices anyway) of cranberry pistachio biscotti. He ate one rich little square and took them back to Glasgow with him (and promptly put them in the freezer – supposedly, these bars will freeze well if need be – if you manage to keep them on hand long enough). I did not have nearly enough Oreos to make a thick crust like the original recipe calls for, but it turns out fine because these are very rich.

When I made these again this past weekend, I had more than enough Oreos – but the crust really did not work out very well. I think the thin-crust variant is actually preferable in terms of how they handled/turned out.

Either way, this is an easy and quick coffee-tinged caramel cookie that probably goes well with a coffee. If the rate at which these disappeared from my office this morning is any indication, they are luscious. I am only guessing – this is not a scientific fact. It could be that people took them because they were small – and then chucked them in the bin!

Coconut Caramel Macchiato Bars
2½ cups (or more) chocolate cookie crumbs
½ cup melted butter (maybe even a bit less)
1 can dulce de leche (or sweetened condensed milk made into dulce de leche)
2 tablespoons espresso powder (I used
1 cup shredded coconut
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (I did this the first time I baked these, and then not the second. Easier to deal with without the chips – and I don’t think the chocolate chips really added anything)

Pre-heat oven to 350 F/175C. Line a rectangular 9”x13” pan with aluminum foil and spray with non-stick spray (such as Pam http://www.pamcookingspray.com/non-stick-spray-products/original-spray-oil/ or the Norwegian equivalent whose name escapes me now)

On low heat on the stovetop, melt the butter. Stir in the chocolate cookie crumbs until moistened. Press gently into the bottom of the prepared pan.

In a bowl, mix dulce de leche and the espresso powder until completely combined. Spread over the cookie-crumb crust.

Sprinkle with the coconut. Bake for 25 minutes until lightly browned.

Allow to cool completely (at least two hours). Cut, store in an airtight container – freeze if you want to.

Disappearing returns: Raspberry-oat bar cookies

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Among the easiest cookies you can possibly make, raspberry-oat bars are also versatile (just substitute raspberry jam for some other jam or dulce de leche or whatever you want. They are pretty good with cherry!). I make these bar cookies all the time.

The funny thing is that I used too much jam this time so some of the middle bars got sticky and gooey – not the nice crispish crust these bar cookies should have. But it didn’t matter. These were still among the first cookies gone during the recent big bake to end 2013.

Definitely one of the easiest things anyone can make on their own.

Already depleted plate of raspberry-oat-bar cookies

Already depleted plate of raspberry-oat-bar cookies

Raspberry-oar bars
3/4 cup raspberry jam (I am not sure I measured this. I simply bought a jar of raspberry jam, strained the seeds out and used everything that was left)
3/4 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 1/4 cups flour
1 1/4 cups oats

Preheat oven to 325F.

Cream butter and brown sugar. Add flour; mix. Add oats, and stir to combine. Spread 2/3 of this mixture in a 9×12 rectangular pan, and press it firmly down with fingers.

Spread the jam on top but do not let the jam touch the sides of the pan. Sprinkle the rest of flour-oat mix over the top.

Bake 35-40 minutes. Cut into small bars. Or big bars, if you prefer.

Lemon cream oat bars

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One of the simplest things I have ever made. Lemon cream is literally a can of condensed milk mixed with lemon juice and lemon zest… and that gets sandwiched between an insanely simple bar-cookie crust. I would argue that the simplicity is the reason a lot of almost-non-bakers opt for bar cookies (to me they just seem like something a(n) (American) Midwestern soccer mom might make. Not sure why bar cookies feel Midwestern to me. They just do. On occasion, though, they join the rest of my repertoire.

Like today.

Lemon cream oat bars

Crust:
1 1/3 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup oats

Preheat oven to 175C. Mix and press half the mixture into an 8-inch by 11-inch greased pan.

Filling:
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup lemon juice
zest of 1 lemon

Mix well. Spread onto bottom layer of crust.

Top the filling with the remaining crust until fully covered.

Bake 20 to 25 minutes. Cool. Once cool, refrigerate.

Once chilled, cut into bars and serve.