Triple Layer Cookie Bars

Have you ever cooked something with a really specific idea of what you were making, only to have it come out as a completely different recipe? I thought this recipe was going to be the ubiquitous but multi-named “Seven Layer Bars,” “Magic Bars,” or “White Trash Candy” that I grew up eating at every party I ever attended in the state of Kentucky. I read the ingredients and assumed that's what the end result would be, so I was completely surprised when it turned out to be a recipe for something significantly different, though no less good.

So what is this a recipe for, exactly? It's sort of like a chewy, dark-chocolate covered macaroon, these bars manage to be sweet without crossing over into cloying because the mix of flavours and textures is so perfectly balanced: salty crust, sweet filling, bitter chocolate topping. The perfect blend. If you were serving these at a party, I'd cut them into truffle-sized, single bite servings. If you're serving them at a girls' night where the goal is less elegance and more decadence, you could cut them into slightly larger, two or three-bite sizes.

I can imagine Eleanor and her friends snacking on these while they played bridge. They're easily transportable, they look incredibly fancy when cut up on a plate because of that smooth chocolate layer, and they're so decadent they'll make even the sweetest tooth swoon with happiness.*

These bars are rich, and, as we've already discovered, Eleanor's sweet tooth ran deep, so I guess that makes sense. Strangely, I haven't been able to think of an American equivalent, but they taste awfully similar to Millionaire's Shortbread-- a Scottish dessert comprised of shortbread topped with caramel and covered in chocolate. The good news is that this recipe is way easier than millionaire's shortbread because it doesn't require you to make caramel (always a plus in my book!), and it makes a ton, because you're gonna want to cut them small. Plus, they keep well in the fridge for at least a week (possibly longer, but that was when we ran out).

I usually don't pay too much attention to the type of butter I use in baked goods, but for this one you're definitely going to want to use salted butter. The slight saltiness in the crust offsets the sweetness of the other layers just perfectly and without it, I think these would cross into sickly-sweet territory. If you can get your hands on desiccated coconut instead of the usual shredded stuff, it might make the bars easier to cut into uniform cubes, but it also probably cuts down on the coconut texture/flavour that shredded gives, so if you're into that, go for shredded.

*I have no picture to show you of how fancy they look once they are cut, because I got distracted with how delicious they were as soon as we started cutting them and totally forgot to take a picture. Next time, friends.

The verdict:

5 spoons out of five. They're rich, delicious, and easy, they keep well, and the recipe makes a lot. What more could you possibly want?

Loose crumbs.

Post-baking, pre-chocolate layer.

Final Layer.

The recipe:

Triple Layer Cookie Bars

The ingredients:

½ c salted butter
1 ½ c rich tea biscuit crumbs, or graham cracker crumbs
7 oz desiccated coconut
14 oz condensed milk
12 oz bittersweet baking chocolate
½ c creamy peanut butter

THE DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 176C/350F.
In 13x9 pan, melt butter in oven.
Once butter is melted, sprinkle crumbs evenly over butter (no need to pack it down or try to stir it into a "crust," it will form on its own in the oven).
Top evenly with coconut, then condensed milk (tip: sprinkle the coconut and pour the condensed milk easily-- you're not gonna be able to level them out much after you add them to the pan without disturbing the bottom crust).
Bake 25 minutes until lightly browned (will be mostly dry but still sticky looking).
During last 5 minutes of baking, in a small saucepan over very low heat, melt chocolate with peanut butter, stirring constantly to avoid burning.
After bars are done baking, pour melted chocolate mixture evenly over hot coconut layer.
Chill thoroughly before cutting bars.
Store loosely covered at room temperature, or in the fridge if you're not going to eat them for a few days.

Yields 30-36 small bars, depending on size.

Old Fashioned Bread Pudding

Did you make a giant loaf of Easter bread last week AND a full-size batch of hot cross buns? Do you now have more raisin-studded bread than you know what to do with, filling your kitchen and threatening to overpower you and your family if you eat anything that isn't a sandwich?

I have a solution for you!

Bread pudding gets such a bum wrap. If you can find it on the menu at a restaurant, it's inevitably pitted against such hard-to-resist sweets as flourless chocolate tortes, vanilla crème brulée, lemon panna cotta, or raspberry sorbet-- all lovely in their own right, and far more exciting then bread pudding sounds. But really, what could be better on a rainy spring night than a steamy teacup full of warm spiced bread pudding, straight from the oven? Spiced with cinnamon and raisins with a creamy, custard-like texture, this is the perfect comfort food, and a total upcycle at that.

There are a lot of recipes like this in the box: dishes that feature ingredients you'd have to throw away otherwise. These are the recipes that Eleanor saved and used over and over because they helped prevent unnecessary waste (including a recipe for mock apple pie that contains... you guessed it! No apples). Since the box was started during WWII when even the most basic foods were being rationed, I guess she became good at stretching her dollars-- and her pantry. Written in what I assume is Eleanor's own hand, the original recipe card for this includes the notation “(good)” at the top, underlined twice-- so you know it was a winner for her, too.

So don't throw away your next loaf of stale bread; get creative and make yourself a bread pudding. It's the perfect dessert for this time of year when the weather vacillates between warm and freezing (cold out? Serve this hot! Warm outside? Serve it chilled!), and it's versatile enough to be appropriate for breakfast or dessert (scoop a dollop of yoghurt on it for breakfast, or serve it with cream as a dessert!) Seriously, what are you waiting for?

This is the perfect recipe on which to use up the remnants of a sweet bread you have laying around (Hawaiian bread would be an absolute dream here!), but the original actually calls for plain sandwich bread, so that would work fine, too. I've included two different amounts of sugar below, depending on how sweet your bread is to start with.

The verdict:

4 spoons out of five. I'd give it five, but by the time I made this, I was so tired of bread that it was hard to muster up as much enthusiasm as this deserved.

The recipe:

Old Fashioned Bread Pudding

The ingredients:

6 slices stale bread (white or your choice of sweet breads)
2 tbsp butter, melted
1 tsp cinnamon
Scant ½ c sugar (if using plain bread, add an additional 2 tbsp sugar)
½ c raisins (optional, but recommended as they definitely improve the texture and flavour)
4 eggs
2 c milk
1 tsp vanilla extract

THE DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 176C/350F.
Grease an 8x8 (or 1 ½ quart) baking dish and set aside.
Cut crusts from bread and brush remaining bread with melted butter.
Sprinkle with cinnamon (and 2 tbsp sugar if you're using plain bread).
Cut bread into quarters (mine were more like cubes because my slices were thicker).
Arrange in layers in prepared dish, sprinkling each layer with raisins as you go.
In a separate bowl, beat eggs just until combined.
Add scant ½ c sugar, milk, and vanilla to eggs and stir until sugar is dissolved.
Pour egg mixture over bread.
Set dish in pan of 1 inch hot water and place in oven.
Bake 55-60 minutes until “silver knife inserted ½ inch into pudding comes out clean.”

This post also listed over at #InspireMe Wednesdays!

Chocolate Shadow Cake

Vanilla coke not included in recipe. I just wanted to remember how excited i was when I found it at a corner store near our flat.

My other grandmother (not Eleanor) told me once how, when she was a newlywed, she would make a cake for my grandfather every week, and they'd eat the whole thing by themselves in seven days, when she would make another one. “It's a wonder we didn't gain a hundred pounds that first year!” she said, shaking her head. Judson doesn't like cake, and they're kind of a pain to make, so I haven't been making one a week, but I have been making a lot lately. The thing is, cake freezes beautifully.

A professional baker I met once told me her secret was that she always froze her cakes for at least a day in between baking them and frosting them, because the ice crystals that formed in the cake would melt when it was thawed and made the cakes even moister. I don't know if that's true, but I do know I've had at least half of a frozen cake in my fridge for the better part of two months now, and I don't mind one bit. You really just never know when you'll be having a bad day and need a slice of chocolate cake to improve it, or a really good day and need a slice of cake to celebrate it.

(Also, Judson and I both tend to forget that we even have a freezer, so once a cake goes in there, it's temporarily forgotten until I reach in for ice, and then I spot the cake again and it's a cheery surprise, as close to having Santa's elves living in my kitchen and making cake when I'm not around as I'll probably ever get.)

All of that brings me to this cake, which is much more lovely than the slightly-sinister name would suggest. I made it last week in a fit of stress baking, on a day when I had already made a pot of blood orange curd, but I still wanted to be in the kitchen, where things are predictable, warm, and static. The recipe comes from the same Woman's Day Kitchen Collector's Cook Book #28: Chocolate Cakes and Frostings mini-book that the last chocolate cake I made came from, and it's dated May 1959. Since the recipe just calls for “fluffy white frosting,” I was on my own until I found a recipe in the box labelled, I kid you not, “Fluffy White Frosting.” Coincidences like this are how I know this project was clearly meant to be.

The cake itself is wonderful-- soft but still firm enough to bear the icing I slathered it with, and it had that amazing crisp-chewy ring around the edge that makes eating a piece of cake a totally transcendent experience. The frosting was also wonderfully, warmly vanilla (I love when “white” frosting becomes “vanilla” and has a depth of flavour beyond just SUGAR), but either I didn't make enough (a real possibility since I used a separate recipe for the cake and the frosting) or I didn't mix it long enough to get it as fluffy as its title boasts (also possible, as I detest making buttercream because it always covers my entire kitchen in a fine layer of powdered sugar), because I barely had enough frosting to cover between the layers and the top of the cake, much less to ice the sides. I increased the frosting recipe below by 50% to account for frosting the sides, too but if you are not a frosting fiend, feel free to reduce.

All that said, we're happily eating it, frozen or not, and I still recommend it... just not for the icing lover in your life.

The verdict:

4 spoons. It was lovely, but I miss frosted sides.

This is the giant mess i sometimes make when I cook. my mom, the neatest cook in the world, would be mortified.

The recipe:

Chocolate Shadow Cake with Fluffy White Frosting

The Ingredients:

The Cake:

4 oz unsweetened chocolate, plus 2 more optional oz for decoration
½ c hot water
1 ¾ c sugar
½ c softened butter, plus 2 more optional tsp for decoration
1 tsp vanilla
3 eggs
2 c sifted cake flour
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
2/3 c milk

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE DIRECTIONS:

CAKE:

Melt 4 oz. chocolate in the hot water over very low heat until thickened, stirring constantly (if you have a double boiler, use it here!).
Add ½ c sugar and cook 2-3 minutes, stirring constantly.
Remove from heat and let cool.
While mixture is cooling, preheat oven to 176C/350F, and line the bottoms of two 9 inch round cake pans with parchment paper.
Cream butter and remaining 1 ¼ c sugar.
Add vanilla, then eggs, one at a time, beating thoroughly after each addition.
In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and salt.
Add flour mixture alternately with milk, beating until smooth.
Add cooled chocolate mixture and blend until mixture is of uniform consistency.
Pour into prepared cake pans (if you only have one, like I do, divide mixture in half and store unused half in a cool place until your pan is freed up).
Bake 40-45 minutes, until a pick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Allow to cool completely, then frost with fluffy white frosting.
After frosting is set, melt the remaining 2 oz of chocolate (if using) with 2 tsp butter.
Dribble over cake and let set before serving.

THE FROSTING:

½ c soft butter
4 ½ c confectioner's sugar
4-6 tbsp milk
1 ½ tsp vanilla

FROSTING:

Beat all ingredients until smooth, scraping down sides of mixing bowl regularly.
Add more powdered sugar if too thin, and more milk or vanilla if too thick.
Continue beating for 30-60 seconds after frosting is blended to increase fluffiness.